Alexion Pharmaceuticals

100 College Street tells an engaging story of New Haven history. Though the structure on the 100 College Street plot has only stood since 2015, the narrative of the site traces back to the 19^th century – a time when New Haven served as a bustling industrial hub for peoples of all races, ethnicities, and religions. Until New Haven’s renewal period under Mayor Dick Lee, this site did not properly exist as 100 College Street on the city’s map, instead standing on Factory Street among a bevy of small crossing streets typical of the industrial urban landscape. However, as time progressed into the 20^th century, New Haven’s shift towards the car and the highway led to the city’s preoccupation with enabling easy accessibility for vehicular transportation into the city. Given the site’s location just off I-95 – between Downtown and The Hill, the entire area surrounding Oak Street was leveled to create space for Route 34, or the Oak Street Connector. At the edge of the Connector’s plan, the plot of land at 100 College Street thus became part of this urban project. Still, the intention to serve a public good left 100 College Street to pay urban planning’s steepest price. Ultimately, the failure and termination of Route 34 not only displaced and destroyed the economic and social dynamism of the neighborhood, but it also left the site of 100 College Street unusable and vacant for decades. Such was the history of the site until the 2014 announcement of the Downtown Crossing Project, an ongoing redevelopment initiative that aims to transform the remnants of the Oak Street Connector into both pedestrian and car-friendly space. It so happens that 100 College Street was deemed to be the first and central piece of this monumental new city project. Consequently, construction of the towering, modern building that today stands on the site began in 2013 and was completed in 2015. Alexion Pharmaceuticals, a bioscience company known for its blood disorder medication Solaris, purchased the 14-story building and declared the impressive, Elkus Manfredi-designed structure as its headquarters in 2016. Standing west of the Knights of Columbus building and north of the Yale New Haven Hospital and Yale School of Medicine, the Alexion Pharmaceuticals building represents a new phase of urban and economic growth in New Haven. With its sleek and angular glass façade, 100 College Street reflects the city’s simultaneously modern push for both business activity and neighborhood inclusion in urban development. While Alexion did announce its relocation of its headquarters to Boston in 2017, the company still plans to maintain 100 College Street as an active center for research and development. In all, while the site carries a significant if not tumultuous past, the future looks bright for 100 College Street as a potential new hub in the city of New Haven. If history is any indication, 100 College Street will continue to write the New Haven narrative.  

The site of 100 College Street has a fairly complex history even though the plot’s first structure at this address was constructed just three years ago. As per the 1886, 1900, and 1924 Sanborn Maps, 100 College Street did not exist as an address since College Street ended at George Street. In the 1886 Sanborn Map, the site would approximately be located on Factory Street between Oak Street and Commerce Street though no structures stood on this block. In the 1901 map, the site was filled by several unnamed stores, the Congregation Bikur Cholin B’Nai Abraham, and a junkyard. Such a density of structures within the Alexion plot reflects the difference in urban planning and activity throughout New Haven’s history. On the periphery of the site, the 1901 Map shows various tenement buildings and two structures occupying cobblers. By the time of the 1973 Map, College Street had been extended down George Street to Congress Avenue; however, the Oak Street Connector Project had leveled the web-like series of Rose Street, Rose Court, Gilgry Avenue around Factory Street in addition to the adjacent area of Oak Street westward from Orange Street. From New Haven records, 100 College Street was the first structure on this site between South Frontage Road and MLK Jr. Boulevard, and it was sold to WE 100 College Street LLC on 5/31/2013. Once more, the structure was completed in 2015, and Alexion Pharmaceuticals began its operations there in 2016. By the end of 2016, this property spanning 2.42 acres was appraised at a total value of $158,390,300 and assessed for a total value of $110,873,210.[1] Lastly, Alexion announced that the company is moving its headquarters to Boston but maintaining 100 College Street as a research and development center. Thus, though the future of the site was put into question with Alexion’s decision, the site’s outlook seems bright with Alexion’s clarified continued presence. All in all, the site of 100 College Street itself tells a microcosmic story of its block, neighborhood, and city from namelessness to nonexistence to prominence.

The social history of the site pairs directly with the developments of its urban context. As noted above, this area served as a melting pot for workers that lived in New Haven for its economic promise. Though many described the area as vibrant and its residents as largely cooperative and harmonious, others more bleakly portrayed the neighborhood as run-down, dangerous, and underserved by the public. Several first-hand newspaper accounts reject any sanctimoniously praiseful recollections of this Oak Street area, instead describing the busy area as ridden with social ills. One article harshly and bluntly states, “how they can look back nostalgically on Oak Street is totally incomprehensible to me. Oak Street was a rat-trap, the worst kind of slum.” That same source critically notes the area’s uncharacteristically high infant mortality rate, its sparsity of electricity, and its high risk of fire due to usage of kerosene lamps by residents.[1] Nevertheless, the decision to raze large sections of this Oak Street neighborhood necessarily eliminated the potential for constructive change within the community. Instead, this neighborhood of incredible diversity both ethnically and racially -- demographically, a map shows equal rates of white and black renters in the area – was destroyed for a project that theoretically aspired to better connect peoples travelling into New Haven by car.[2] However, the failure of the initiative begs the question of whether any aspect of the project was worthwhile. As Mayor Dick Lee stated after the Oak Street Connector Project’s termination, “the Oak Street Connector is now a liability rather than an asset… (the area) has become a ghost city. The streets have become blighted and the adjacent properties abandoned. The long delay by the state created a series of problems and destroyed morale in the neighborhood affected.”[3] Today, the site is once again part of the Downtown Crossing Project, and thus hopes to promote a sense of social and economic dynamism that was lost by the Connector project decades ago. The development of 100 College Street and the attraction of Alexion Pharmaceuticals as the tenant together effectively and efficiently infuse the community with both economic and social activity. Whereas the site used to be vacant, today 100 College Street occupies about 450 individuals, and in turn serves as a new working hub for peoples of various ethnic, racial, and intellectual backgrounds. All in all, the social history of the site is one of three distinct phases ranging from peak activity to dissolution to reemergence, and its future only looks more promising as New Haven’s economic and urban landscapes continue to grow.    

Erected above the edge of the failed Oak Street Connector, the Alexion Pharmaceuticals Building looks over the medley of thruways connecting to I-95, and stands between Downtown and the less developed Hill neighborhood. At the plan level, the building is rectangular in shape and takes up about one-fifth of the extended block bounded by South Frontage Road, MLK Jr. Boulevard, College Street, and Park Street --- York Street does not continue past MLK Jr. Boulevard. Today, to the immediate south of the site lies housing for the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine, and to the west lies the Yale New Haven Hospital. Behind the structure on the block stands the immense Air Rights Garage, and two blocks north-west of the lot is the Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School – not far from where the Zunder School stood until Mayor Dick Lee’s Renewal Project of the 1950s. 

Before the Oak Street Connector Project that began in the 1950s, the urban setting surrounding this site was principally low-income housing and small storefronts for immigrant workers. In this way, the area boasted a high density of activity as evidenced by a more chaotic layout of smaller, crossing streets that still partly remain in the Hill neighborhood. In the 1884, 1901, and 1924 Sanborn Maps, the area around the site of 100 College Street – then on Factory Street (tellingly named) between Oak St. and Commerce St. – was populated with tenements and boarding houses, small stores and clothing factories (such as the Newman and Sons Corset Factory), and Jewish synagogues and congregational buildings. Along with the visual context given by the Sanborn maps, newspaper articles mention that “the city’s first synagogues” were located in this area, and several published sources emphasize that various ethnic, racial, and religious groups lived in this location in relative harmony. One article notes, “Jew, Gentiles, and blacks lived as neighbors and had each others’ interests at heart,” whereas another first-hand account explains, “the neighborhood was a mix of totally integrated Jews, blacks, Poles, and Italians.” However, underlying this communal cooperation was a shared poverty and first-generation immigrant status that tainted their quality of lives.[1]

At the time that the Connector was built – the highway ending at York Street opened in the end of 1958 – much of the local population, infrastructure, and architecture was uprooted for the sake of the public project. This Route 34 initiative led to the displacement of 880 families, 350 demolished buildings, and the separation of Downtown from various neighborhoods, Union Station, and the Yale School of Medicine.[2] However, two principal nodes in the urban context persisted through this time of renewal: the Knights of Columbus Building – which sits one block west of 100 College Street – and the Southern New England Telephone Company – which occupied a plot of land on College Street around George Street.[3] Hence, for a significant period of time, this area became unwalkable and its urban dynamism almost entirely simmered down. If anything, such a change in the site’s urban history reflects the clear posturing of New Haven to the highway as a magnet of drawing in economic opportunity, and thus the elevation of economic potential as the determinant of city spaces. Today, 100 College Street is essentially being used for a similar purpose despite its increasingly different urban context. The property of 100 College Street represents a central element of the Downtown Crossing Project, a new redevelopment plan that aspires to connect Downtown, The Hill, Union Station, and Medical Campuses through a redefinition of public and pedestrian space over the remnants of Route 34. The 4-Phase plan looks to extend Orange Street to South Orange Street and Temple Street to Congress Avenue, create pedestrian and bicycle-friendly infrastructure, establish a public plaza, and reclaim ten acres of developable land from the former expressway’s right of way.[4] With this project, 100 College Street again stands at the heart of another urban planning movement in New Haven, and once more reflects the time’s particular economic (corporate office space development) and social (pedestrian, green space) focuses. While the tension during the Oak Street Connector days centered on the displacement of communities for “public” highway access, the albeit less pronounced strain today rests in the different styles and focuses promoted by the citizenry versus those of corporate entities like Alexion. Though this redevelopment project is less destructive than that of Route 34, the debate of public versus private space should evermore and continue to be alive today. All in all, in looking ahead to the future, the urban context surrounding 100 College Street is not entirely uncertain given the renderings and practical undertakings of those leading the Downtown Crossing Project. Nevertheless, if New Haven’s history is suggestive of any reality then any urban initiative must be scrutinized and understood as theoretical until its completion.