Background  For 40 years the Knox Foundation has worked to carry out the vision of Betty Knox, a Hartford benefactress and member of the Court of Common Council, who left the bulk of her estate to improve the city of Hartford through beautification efforts. From its founding, in 1966, to 1977, the Knox Foundation operated as one entity with two major emphases: one focused on horticulture—the “greening of Hartford”—and the second on downtown rejuvenation, or civic renewal.

 In the early 1970s, during a period when it was unprofitable to undertake commercial development in downtown Hartford, the foundation allocated about one-half of its assets to help stimulate development downtown. One such Knox-stimulated civic renewal project was the building of the Carousel in Bushnell Park.

 In 1977 the two distinct emphases gave birth to two separate organizations and the corpus was evenly divided between them, providing $700,000 to each. The greening committee became the Knox Parks Foundation. The downtown rejuvenation effort, first called the Knox Downtown Foundation, is known today as The Knox Foundation.