Celebrating the First 100 Years of the Travelers Tower

When the doors to the Travelers Tower first opened, it was a mere 10 stories. Ten thousand tons of pink granite, 4,200 tons of steel and 2,000 windows later, the Hartford skyline was forever changed by our iconic Tower. When finished in July of 1919, it stood proudly as New England’s tallest and the country’s seventh-largest building. Since then, we’ve seen some historic changes come and go. Click each point to relive some unique Travelers Tower memories as we look forward to the next 100 years.

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Originally, the Tower’s topmost point featured a cluster of gold-painted brass globes. However, a windstorm in 1996 brought the finial crashing down, never to be replaced again.

Finial

In September of 1938, the Tower became a beacon of public service when WTIC set up a makeshift shortwave to share eyewitness accounts of severe hurricane flooding. The Hartford area still enjoys broadcasts from WTIC, which had been named for the Travelers Insurance Company and was housed in the Tower until the 1970s.

WTIC Broadcast

Our legacy in research started in the Travelers Tower with one inspector in the 1890s. By 1912, we grew our expertise to cover specialty departments, including boiler water analysis, machinery guarding and boiler and elevator safety. Today, our research capabilities span the many industries we insure.

Technical Research

Leveraging data has long been a Travelers hallmark. Records show that claim data was tabulated as far back as 1897. From the 1920s through our first computer installment in 1958, hundreds of millions of punch cards were used for accumulating statistics about accident claims each year.

Tabulating

In 1904, we only had 170 phones. The Travelers Standard reported in February 1920 that a large modern switchboard was installed on the 9th floor. It raised the phone count to 392, required 11 operators and could handle more than 5,000 connections daily.

Telephone Exchange

Back in 1926, a wax cylinder phonograph system called an Ediphone (created by Edison) was used to make voice recordings. The wax was later “shaved” so the cylinders could be reused. At that time, 303 stenographers transcribed and shaved an average of 17,000 cylinders a month.

Dictation and Stenography

Court Hall, which currently houses a café for employees on the first floor, was once home to WTIC’s concert orchestra. During radio’s heyday, broadcast orchestras (or radio orchestras) provided live programming and performed incidental or theme music for various shows during the station’s broadcasts.

WTIC Concert Orchestra

What started out as Union Trust Company of Hartford in 1913 was renamed soon after as Travelers Bank and Trust. It served as a location where employees could pick up their paychecks and earn interest on savings deposits and where agents could bring premiums and collect claim payments.