Southern New England Telephone Company Administration Building (The Eli)

The Southern New England Telephone Company Administration Building (or “SNET building”), more recently known as The Eli, is a skyscraper in downtown New Haven located at the corner of Church St. and Wall St. At the time of its construction in 1938, it was the tallest building in New Haven. It is considered quintessentially in the Art Deco style; it was made using the most modern materials and methods in line with interwar conceptions of luxury and displays great symbolism through its imposing nature and numerous motifs. The building was considered of sufficient architectural merit to be listed in the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

The building was the tallest building in New Haven for decades. The use of large vertical lines, bright stone, and ornamentation compels passers-by to look up at it in awe. This is in line with its historical use: SNET, who started planning the building in 1928, was one of the most important companies (and one of the biggest employers) in Connecticut. Hence, the SNET Administration Building was to contemporaneous architecture as SNET was to southern Connecticut.

The Southern New England Telephone Company (1938-1997)

Connecticut Properties LLC (1997-Present)

Prior to SNET’s acquisition of the site, the immediate area was entirely residential. SNET purchased and demolished four small residences to build the building and its parking lot. Immediately before the building’s construction, Emily H. Whitney is listed as living at 227 Church Street. Prior to SNET, the site was generally unremarkable.

The building was—as its name suggests—purely an administrative building from its construction in 1938 to its acquisition by a real estate developer, Connecticut Properties LLC, in 1997. It provided jobs for around 1,200 people at its peak, making it an important player in New Haven’s economic history. Moreover, the presence of the telephone company in New Haven implies the city’s connectedness with the world at large.

The building’s construction was a turning point for that area of downtown. Prior to it, the area was primarily residential (see site history); today, it is in one of the tallest areas in New Haven.

After the building was sold to a real estate developer, its nature changed dramatically. Part of the first floor became a credit union while much of the interior of the building was repurposed for housing. The building’s current name, “The Eli,” implies a link with Yale University; in reality, before the building was re-opened in 2004 as luxury condos, there was little social overlap between Yale and the SNET building.

In some ways, the building has not changed that much in character. It was designed as a building for luxury-capitalism, and it remains one—albeit in an altered form. The wealthy company for which it was constructed has moved out, but affluent members of the New Haven community have filled the grand space with a new generation of wealth. 

The SNET building lies one block offset from the New Haven green, placing it squarely in the city’s downtown. It is surrounded by other institutional/commercial buildings, making its surrounding blocks an area of work rather than residence. It lies next to the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, built in 1870. It was the tallest building in New Haven between 1938 and 1966 when both The Omni Hotel and the Kline Biology Tower were built. Despite this, the building remains a key part of the New Haven skyline. Given the luxury underlying its construction and general grandeur, the building acts as a tower of commerce: i.e., it marked the point at which that area of Church Street became a place of wealthy companies rather than residences.

This 17-story Art Deco building lords over the New Haven Green in light-grey limestone. There are windows at consistent intervals (both vertically and horizontally) on all four sides of the building. The windows are surrounded by steel grills. All four sides of the building display iconographic motifs. 

The verticality of the building is emphasized by the large, seamless columns which continue with step-backs on higher floors. All elements of the exterior come together to form tall vertical rectangles. The top step-back of the building was at one point entirely a service area but has more recently been carved out to make apartments.

Behind the limestone skin lies a core of steel and concrete. The interior is as ornately decorated as the exterior, featuring extensive use of marble and ornate wood. Carved into the lobby floor by the entrance is the outline of the state of Connecticut in metal alongside text that reads “1878 1938”—1878 being the year in which SNET built the first telephone exchange in Connecticut and 1938 being the year that the SNET building was constructed. The lobby also features bronze furniture designed specifically for the building by Douglas Orr, the building’s primary architect. Above doors in the lobby are flying swans, presumably alluding to the speed of telephone communication enabled by SNET. Almost all fixtures in the lobby are made of either red marble or metal. The ceiling of the lobby consists of layers of equally spaced squares with lamps in the middle, giving it the same style as the exterior rectangles and windows.

The original first floor spanned approximately 20 feet with a small mezzanine to allow for communal spaces (e.g., an auditorium, a library, and a cafeteria) on the peripheries of the building. These spaces were converted into offices in 1948, though many of the original panels and fixtures were kept. Even less important communal spaces, like bathrooms, feature extensive use of marble.

Many of the original materials and fixtures were retained when the building was converted into apartments; the reader is encouraged to visit the site should the opportunity present itself to experience the full extent of the use of luxury.

http://gis.vgsi.com/newhavenct/Parcel.aspx?pid=13847

https://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/97001447.pdf

Sanborn maps

Douglas Orr's original drawings (from the New Haven Museum archives)

Personal conversations with employees of the building (a realtor and a superintendent)