Trailblazer Building

The three-story brick building at 294 Elm Street was completed in 1916 as an auto sales room and garage with offices above. According to the 1915 permit for a “brick garage and salesroom”, it was designed by architect R.W. Foote for owner N.B. Whitfield. The mason was Sperry and Treat and the carpenter was Wm. Ritchie Co. The flat roof and the large, rectangular windows are overlaid by a façade with neo-classical detail, signifying a Beaux-Arts influence. Indeed, the Historic Resources Inventory of the Connecticut Historical Commission listed the style as “Beaxu-Arts Classical (commercial)” [sic]. Interestingly, despite being specifically commissioned as an automobile show room, the building was designed at a time when automotive culture was just emerging. Cars had not yet developed a sleek and low aesthetic and there was no prominent “car architecture” yet. As a result, it is surprisingly vertical and rectilinear for an auto building. The glass storefront at ground level is a typical retail space, and the offices above are generic. Only a decorative element on the roof gives away its purpose: Foote crowned the building with a prominent sculptural relief of an automobile grill with the year “1916” carved into it.  By stylizing the automobile into a classical detail, he may have legitimized a new and still foreign modern object through relation to Greco-Roman architecture.



Being ‘generic’ has served the building well: the quality, well-proportioned spaces easily adapted to various functions through time. The ground floor housed a car sales floor, then a printing and binding company, a flower shop, and finally Trailblazer. The two floors above it were used as various offices and now - a dance rehearsal studio. Below is a more detailed account of the site and the building’s transformation.



296 Elm Street. Photo courtesy of the Shops at Yale