Connecticut Financial Center

As the tallest building in New Haven, the Connecticut Financial Center occupies an important position in the city of New Haven. Located between Henry Austin’s City Hall and the Post Office, the Center rises above the older buildings and faces the New Haven Green. Designed by Crang & Boake Architects of Toronto, the building is notable for its granite clad sides and pointed tent-like structure on its roof that give it a major presence on the New Haven skyline. Replacing the Powell Building (which was New Haven’s first skyscraper), the Center is the result of a long effort by the City of New Haven to build a financial center adjacent to City Hall. Currently home to a milieu of powerful institutions from Bank of America to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Connecticut Financial Center lives up to its name as the financial hub of New Haven. 

At the beginning of the 20th century, Henry Austin’s City Hall dominated the block of Church Street adjacent to the New Haven Green. The remainder of the block was occupied by various smaller commercial buildings owned by residents of New Haven (4). By 1924, architect Roy W. Foote designed the Powell Building (9) on the site where the Connecticut Financial Center now stands, which is considered to be New Haven’s first skyscraper. The building used neo-Gothic ornamentation on its top two floors and was home to a bank and some city offices (9). James Gamble Rogers’s Federal Post Office went up in 1913 (8), cementing the block of Church Street that runs along the Green as the home of New Haven’s primary governmental and financial institutions. Over the course of the twentieth century, New Haven was hit by hard economic times and much of the block around the Powell Building fell into decay. In 1967, the Powell Building and the Post Office were slated for demolition in order to develop the block into a new sleek, and modern Federal Plaza (5) that would destroy the Federal Post Office building. The project was abandoned and according to Vincent Scully, rightfully so, “since its sterile pretension would have easily rivaled that of Mussolini’s E.U.R.” (5) Though this specific project failed, dreams of redeveloping the governmental plaza, including preserving the historic buildings, did not die out. Yale’s own Paul Rudolph proposed a plan that kept the historic City Hall façade and the Post Office, but was ultimately deemed too expensive (7). In 1980, New Haven mayor Biagio DiLieto scaled back the size of the project due to budget concerns. It would now include just a new municipal building (including preserving the historical façade of City Hall) and a new office tower (1). Chase Enterprises was named as the developer of the project in 1982 and construction began on the tower in 1988 (1).

The block of Church Street along the New Haven Green represents the institutionalization of power in New Haven over the 20th century. At the turn of the century, Henry Austin’s City Hall and the police headquarters were the only government buildings on the block (4). Small businesses with quaint, turn of the century names like White’s New Tontine Hotel and J.H. McDonald’s Livery occupied much of surrounding space (4). They represent a bygone era where local businesses, often owned by local families, played an important role in the American economy. Yale University even had property on the block via a Yale Storage Warehouse (4). By 1924, much had changed surrounding City Hall as Church Street became home to many important civic and financial institutions. The Powell Building, Fire Department Headquarters, the Plymouth Building, and the Second National Bank Building represent the solidification of institutions via building types meant to convey power (3). Especially with James Gamble Rogers’s Post Office, neoclassical forms were used to express the importance of government within the city. By 1974, as New Haven underwent urban renewal and deindustrialization, the block of Church Street surrounding City Hall had gradually decayed as many buildings were demolished, leaving a gaping hole in the block (2). In 1976, much of Henry Austin’s original City Hall building was demolished to make room for a new municipal complex, that would hopefully include a new office tower (1). Many New Haven mayors tried and failed to extend the civic and cultural importance of the Green past Church Street with a new development on the block. Ultimately, a long period of various redevelopment proposals resulted in the Connecticut Financial Center, a postmodern attempt to connect to the historic nature of the site and offer New Haven a true hub for finance just off the Green. 

Sitting back from Church Street and the Green, the Connecticut Financial Center dwarfs the buildings around it and rises dramatically as a monument to financial power. One must transcend a significant grade change from street to the tower’s front door. The gold letters spelling out the building’s name shine brightly, luring visitors towards its luxurious interior. Smashed between the classic structures of City Hall and the Post Office, the plaza in front of the building is a meeting place between the old and the new. The plaza is an open-air front porch to the Center, and a not terribly exciting front porch at that. Passerby cross the sidewalk in front of it, rarely venturing into the plaza unless to visit the building itself. To the left of the building is a narrow passageway that stretches through the block, filling in the space where Court Street once ran (2,3,4). Though certainly helpful in breaking up urban density, the passageway is nothing more than a glorified alley, a conduit between one street and another. The Connecticut Financial Center occupies an incredibly significant location in the city of New Haven and succeeds in many ways, but could further enhance the urban setting around it. 

Totally modern yet totally respective of classical forms, the Connecticut Financial Center is in many ways the quintessential postmodern skyscraper. As dictated by Robert Venturi, postmodernism grew out of the intensive modernism of the 1950s and 60s. Venturi argued for an architecture that celebrated the existing architecture of a specific location, rather than rejecting it, and encouraged the use of fragmentation and unusual materials. It seems as though Crang & Boake adhered closely to these principles of postmodernism when designing the Center, and rightfully so as the building occupies a crucial position in New Haven. Clad in pale pink granite (1), the building echoes the materials of its neighbors, City Hall and the Post Office, giving it a modern yet classical texture. Crang & Boake employ a sort of geometrical ornamentation above the grand entrance by twisting the granite blocks inwards towards each other. As the building climbs, it steps back into itself as a nod to the great Art Deco skyscrapers and Yale’s Harkness Tower. At its top lies the building’s most unusual but yet most recognizable features, the three pyramid structures. Aligned perpendicular with Church Street, the three pyramids mirror the three iconic steeples on the Green. The central pyramid structure is raised above the others, essentially making it an open air tent perched on top of the building. Despite its intention to give the tower a memorable finish, the tent structure gives the appearance that someone is throwing a party on top of the building. 

1. Kennedy, Shawn G., “Real Estate; A Municipal Complex for New Haven.” April 6, 1988, New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/06/business/real-estate-a-municipal-complex-for-new-haven.html.
2. Sanborn Map Company of New York, Insurance Maps of New Haven Connecticut, Volume 1, 1973, 7.
3. Sanborn Map Company of New York, Insurance Maps of New Haven Connecticut, Volume 1, 1924, 7.
4. Sanborn-Ferris Map Co., Insurance Maps of New Haven, Connecticut Volume 1, 1901, 5.
5. Scully, Vincent. American Architecture and Urbanism. San Antonio, Texas: Trinity University Press, 1969. 252-253.
6. “157 Church Street.” Vision Government Solutions. 2016. http://gis.vgsi.com/newhavenct/Parcel.aspx?pid=13808. 
7. “Government Center, New Haven, CT, 1968-1981 Project Not Built.” University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Accessed February 20, 2018. http://prudolph.lib.umassd.edu/node/4695.
8. “An Iconic Age for Architecture in New Haven.” Patriquin Architects. Last modified March 21, 2013. http://www.patriquinarchitects.com/iconic-age-for-architecture-in-new-haven/ 
9. “Powell Building, 155-157 Church Street, New Haven, CT.” Historic American Building Survey. Documented 1933. https://www.loc.gov/search/500/.