Marc Gottesdiener & Co.

Marc Gottesdiener & Co.

The SODO Mural On Buckingham Street

ABOUT MARC GOTTESDIENER & CO., INC.

The SODO Mural On Buckingham Street

The SODO Mural On Buckingham Street
Marc Gottesdiener has owned the 161-165 Buckingham Street lot since 1979 and the 12-unit apartment building at 177 Buckingham Street at the corner of Wadsworth Street and its smaller parking lot since 1987. Ove the years we have had a number of parkers such as the state of CT, an architect firm employees, the Department of Children & Youth Services employees, two parking companies, The CT state banking commission employees, tenants in our building, people needing parking going to courts or state offices, a law firm employees, a construction company needing a safe lot to store their equipment and vehicles while doing work nearby, and numerous temporary parkers needing affordable parking or spots for their larger vehicles.

Annually pre-pandemic our SODO- South Downtown Hartford neighborhood hosted an annual Progressive dinner as a get together for camaraderie and some fund raising. At one such dinner in 2019 the main dish was being hoisted at the Bushnell I Condominiums and one of the guests with Marc was Matthew Conway who started talking about starting a nonprofit entity to create murals on buildings and properties to enhance the various neighborhoods in greater Hartford. Matt’s company is RiseUp For Arts and SODO started when in 1995 the vision of Harford 2000 was initiated by the late Linda Bayer and Patricia Williams planners at the city in conjunction with state neighborhood revitalization zone legislation. Marc is the last remaining member in the neighborhood in SODO.

Then the pandemic hit our world and I remembered our conversation and reached out to Matt to see if it might be possible on my large east side 3 story brick wall with only a small window on each floor overlooking the parking in the pantries. The brick 1927-1928 wall would be a perfect pallet for a design to bring some beauty to our SODO neighborhood which was full of vacant parking lots where many older buildings had once existed. In talking with Matt, we needed to find supporters besides myself, so we asked all kinds of neighbors & businesses and spread the word through our neighborhood newsletter & word of mouth. We landed neighborhood sponsors of Sustainable Hartford, our SODO NRZ- Neighborhood Revitalization Zone- of 13 in Hartford, Roggi’s Auto, Noble Gas, Catholic Charities, Linden Apartment Community, and Matt found the artists which featured Alex Ranniello, and Chris Gann was the 2nd artist. The dedication in May 2021 was highlighted by about a dozen Girl Scouts locally painting the flowers at the bottom of the mural. The whole process was joyful and added to our SODO neighborhood which I have always been a member & currently on the Board.

The mural serves as a welcoming homage to our neighborhood, the smallest in Harford just south of Downtown.

Share by: