Insurance capital of America
Hartford has been in the insurance business since before it was known for anything else. When fire leveled much of lower Manhattan in 1835, the city's underwriters paid every claim in full — one company president pledged his personal assets to cover it — and the reputation stuck. Aetna, Travelers, and The Hartford are still headquartered here. The older story is the Charter Oak: in 1687 colonists hid Connecticut's royal charter inside a hollow tree rather than surrender it to the crown's governor, and the tree has been on the state quarter ever since. Mark Twain built an eccentric brick house on Farmington Avenue in 1874 and wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn inside it, with Harriet Beecher Stowe living next door. The Wadsworth Atheneum, open since 1844, is the oldest continuously operating public art museum in the country.
