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].