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.

Crawford Manor contains many elements of Paul Rudolph’s distinctive modernist ethos, expressed through several material and design innovations necessitated by the project’s constraints [1,7]. The tower was financed by federal urban renewal funding; its $1,525,000 budget placed stringent limits on Rudolph’s design, but, through his innovations, the total development cost exceeded that budget by only $60,000 [1,13]. The fifteen-story tower is C-shaped, and consists of two central piers, on either side of the glass-paneled main entrance, with two wings curving outward into the parking lot on the north and west sides of the property, creating a small enclosed courtyard on the front facade [1]. The building reflects several classic principles of brutalism, including its use of exposed materials, its focus on utility and interior space, and its massive scale [1].

The building’s most distinctive feature is the cantilevered, curved, three-by-six-foot balconies rising at alternating perpendicular angles from the wings [1]. The balconies, which protrude in a regular pattern from the second through fourteenth floors, give the building a sense of “pragmatic monumentality,” and, along with the vertically ribbed concrete exterior, emphasize the tower’s verticality [1,3]. The building is steel-framed and built with poured concrete; the exterior consists of 175,000 tan concrete blocks sealed with mortar [1]. These blocks are the most novel design innovation of the tower; Rudolph personally designed thirteen unique blocks, which were prefabricated to reduce the building’s construction costs by eliminating the need for onsite casting [3,1]. The ribbing was meant to redirect rainwater to reduce staining and allow for easy cleaning, lowering maintenance costs [1].

Crawford Manor’s external form facilitates the pragmatism of its interior, which contains 109 units, including 52 300-square-foot studio units, 52 400-square-foot studio units, and 5 600-square-foot two-bedroom units [13]. The C-shape allowed Rudolph to create irregular apartment layouts that facilitated a range of activities [1]. The balconies, which formed lintels for the floors below, were accompanied by metal frame windows, above and below, creating an abundance of interior lighting [1]. Amidst the white poured-concrete ceilings and walls, the elevator and unit doors on each floor are painted different colors to help the elderly residents distinguish between them [1].

The building has changed minimally since its completion in the fall of 1966. Aside from significant renovations to improve the accessibility of units on the second through seventh floors and repair the exterior in 1997, and substantial balcony restorations and electrical improvements in 2002 and 2003, the building has otherwise undergone only minor restoration and has experienced no significant alterations in the last five decades [4]. Still, it remains in good condition.

1. United States Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. George Crawford Manor. By Lucas A. Karmazinas. OMB 1024-0018. Hartford, CT: 2014.

2. State of Connecticut, Connecticut Historical Commission, Historic Resources Inventory. George Crawford Manor. By Erica Ling and Sandra Lee. New Haven, CT: 1979.

3. Timothy M. Rohan, The Architecture of Paul Rudolph (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2014).

4. City of New Haven Building Department, Land/Building Records, 84-96 Park Street.

5. “A Note to the Architects of Japan: Paul Rudolph.” The Kokusai-Kentiku International Review of Architecture, XXXII, no.IV (April 1965). Retrieved from Sterling Memorial Library Manuscripts & Archives.

6. Peter Collins, “Wither Paul Rudolph?”, Progressive Architecture, 42, 130-133 (August 1961). Retrieved from Sterling Memorial Library Manuscripts & Archives.

7. January 6, 1963; “New Haven Is Becoming A Model City --- Architecturally,” New Haven Register, January 6, 1963. Retrieved from Sterling Memorial Library Manuscripts & Archives.

8. Paul Rudolph, Journal of Architectural Education, 13, no.2 (August 1968). Retrieved from Sterling Memorial Library Manuscripts & Archives.

9. Architectural Record (Oct 1956). Retrieved from Sterling Memorial Library Manuscripts & Archives.

10. Journal of the National Concrete Masonry Association, 23, No.3. Retrieved from Sterling Memorial Library Manuscripts & Archives.

11. Sanborn Map Company. New Haven Sanborn Maps. 1923, updated 1960.

12. New Haven Redevelopment Agency Records. Crawford Manor Fact Sheet. Retrieved from Sterling Memorial Library Manuscripts & Archives.