Elmcrest Hospital & the Colt Connection

COLLECTION HISTORY

The people behind the place.

Richard Hart built the Hart–Jarvis House in 1829–1830 for his daughter Elizabeth Hart and her husband, William Jarvis. Their daughter, Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt, grew up there. The family left in 1851, decades before the property became part of Elmcrest. [EC-009]

The later campus incorporated neighboring residences: Erastus Brainerd Jr.’s villa, dated about 1852, and John H. Sage’s house, built in 1884. The 1874 map helps locate the earlier properties. Modern photographs show surviving houses, not their appearance when first built. [EC-009]

Elizabeth married Samuel Colt in 1856. Armsmear, their Hartford home, belongs to the Colt family’s separate Hartford history. The Portland connection is her childhood house; the sources do not establish her as Elmcrest’s founder or benefactor. [EC-011]

The preservation nomination dates Elmcrest’s founding to 1938 and final closure to 2008. Other summaries use 1942 and circa 2006. Those differences remain visible here pending contemporary hospital records. A 2009 preservation campaign and the 2012 National Register acceptance document the houses’ later heritage status. [EC-009]

The Hart–Jarvis, Brainerd and Sage houses were homes before they became part of a hospital landscape. Their construction dates explain that earlier residential chapter, while photographs made during later preservation efforts document what survived. Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt’s childhood connection belongs to the family history of the Hart–Jarvis House; it does not establish that she created or financed Elmcrest. Separating these histories makes the campus more interesting, not less: it shows how older domestic spaces acquired new institutional uses. The competing hospital founding and closure dates remain attributed until contemporary records settle them. Preservation documents provide firm evidence of later recognition but cannot resolve every earlier operating milestone by themselves. [EC-009] [EC-011]