George Crawford Manor

Designed by preeminent modernist architect Paul Rudolph, and built from 1964 to 1966, George Crawford Manor is a fifteen-story brutalist tower built as affordable housing for the elderly [1,6]. Set off from the street on a corner lot in the Dwight-Edgewood neighborhood, the building is notable for its irregular C-shaped form, its alternating, projecting balconies protruding from the second to fourteenth floors, and its tan, ribbed concrete outer surface [1]. The building serves as an icon of New Haven’s mid-1960s affordable housing boom, after the era of urban renewal, driven by Mayor Richard C. Lee, led to the destruction of 129 acres of housing—particularly along the route of the Oak Street Connector, which was completed in 1959; North Frontage Road, which bounds the Crawford Manor lot to the southwest, was built as an extension of the Connector. Its 109 single- and double-occupant units are still in use today [1,4]. Described as “the popular press’s ideal choice for the role of American Form-Giver of the Space Age,” Rudolph was noted for his range of experimental, international-style designs, including the Yale Art and Architecture Building, a 1,500-car parking garage in downtown New Haven, the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan, and the nondenominational chapel at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute [6,3]. Crawford Manor was one of the sole instances in which Rudolph applied his principles of high design to affordable housing, utilizing thirteen customized and uniquely shaped concrete blocks with vertically ribbed surfaces and narrow ribbed surfaces to create cheaply installed, prefabricated units at minimal construction and maintenance cost [1]. In September 1966, Crawford Manor was one of seven buildings nationwide distinguished by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Project Design Award; with minimal renovations in its fifty-two years of occupancy, Rudolph’s tower has stood the test of time [1,4].

1966 to Present: City of New Haven Housing Authority

Crawford Manor lies along North Frontage Road, an extension of the Oak Street Connector, built following the clearance of 129 acres of officially designated “slum” or “underutilized” areas during the era of urban renewal (as mentioned above) [1]. Sanborn fire insurance maps of New Haven, updated in 1966, show the block previously contained with close to a dozen houses and two large apartment buildings where the Manor, North Frontage Road, and a parking lot now lie [11].

Crawford Manor is notable among New Haven’s public housing projects of the urban renewal era. Large-scale redevelopment projects increased the city’s number of housing units by 6 percent in the 1960s, and senior housing projects were prioritized as part of a $10.8 million plan to redevelop the Dwight Neighborhood [1]. Rudolph began planning the building in 1962; construction by Giordano Construction Company, of Branford, Connecticut, began in summer 1965 and was completed in fall 1966, and the building was fully occupied by October 23 of that year [2,1]. Therefore, Crawford Manor is emblematic of the New Haven’s redevelopment in the 1960s; it’s a looming presence amidst the city’s pockmarked, unevenly developed downtown landscape.

Crawford Manor has been occupied by low-income senior residents of New Haven, and owned by the city Housing Authority, since its construction from 1964 to 1966 [2,4]. The Housing Authority of New Haven was established in 1938, in the wake of the New Deal-era Housing Act of 1937 [1]. After overseeing three large public housing projects from 1939 to 1941, HANH turned its attention to senior housing in the 1960s [1]. In 1962, with the city plagued by housing shortages in the wake of the Connector’s construction, 400 applications were submitted for 219 impending senior housing units; Crawford Manor, with twice as many units as any other other public housing building erected at this time, played a significant role in alleviating this shortage [1].

As the city’s preeminent architect in the era of urban renewal, Paul Rudolph saw the Oak Street Connector as the “gateway to New Haven” [7]. As was typical for architects of the era, Rudolph considered urban design in relation to the channels along which automobiles flowed; he felt the city should declare its character outward from the highway [7]. Thus, Crawford Manor was built to fulfill a dual function: providing affordable housing for seniors, and broadcasting the city’s industrial might and aesthetic grandeur to passersby on the street and commuters on the Oak Street Connector [1]. The building remains a fully operational residence. When I visited, I spotted clothes, chairs, and a bike on the balconies, and the lobby was bustling.

Crawford Manor dominates its immediate landscape, rising up above the surrounding parking lots and two-to-three story brick buildings and Greek Revival homes. Located two blocks northeast of Yale-New Haven Hospital, the tower is set off thirty feet from the Park Street and North Frontage Road, bounded by fenced-in green space to the south and east and a resident-only parking lot and community garden, run by the New Haven Land Trust, to the north and west [1]. Paul Rudolph’s early works expressed a wide variety of styles, motivated by his ambition to accommodate his buildings to their surrounding environment [5,3]. However, designs like Crawford Manor and the Art and Architecture Building demonstrated a departure from this grounding ethos; instead of responding to the existing ambient, they create an entirely new one, a stark, monumental contrast to the bordering blocks [3]. Even today, Crawford Manor’s relationship to its setting reflects a mantra of consolidation and control, undergirded by a disregard of the city’s poor residents, that officials like Mayor Lee employed in their drive for urban renewal.