The former Southern New England Telephone Company Administration Building is an Art Deco skyscraper built in 1937-1938 at 227 Church Street in New Haven. Also known as The Eli (after its conversion to luxury apartments in 2004), it was designed by Roy W. Foote and Douglas Orr, who made extensive use of Stony Creek pink granite. When it was built, it was the city’s tallest building.
Built between 1927 and 1929, the Bridgeport City Trust Building, at 955 Main Street in Bridgeport, is a 10-story art deco building designed by the firm of Dennison & Hirons. It is part of a group of buildings, called the CityTrust Complex, that were constructed between 1917 and 1930. After the Bridgeport Citytrust Company failed in 1991, the building was restored and is now called the City Trust Apartments.
Congregation Adath Israel was organized in 1902. A two-story building in Portland was purchased in 1908 and converted into a synagogue. The current synagogue, at 48 Church Street in Middletown, was built in 1929. In the 1940s, the congregation changed from its original Orthodoxy when the Charter was changed to Conservative.
The former headquarters building of the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, at 56 Prospect Street in Hartford, is currently vacant. An Art Deco structure built in 1932, it was designed by Carl J. Malmfeldt. This block of Prospect Street was once the site of two lost Hartford landmarks: the old headquarters of the Travelers Insurance Company and Parson’s Theatre. To learn about the founding of Hartford Steam Boiler and find out about other great sites in downtown Hartford, check out Tour 1 in my new book, A Guide to Historic Hartford, Connecticut.
In 1914, Father Francis P. Nolan built a house in the Blue Hills section of Hartford. In 1924, he was named founding pastor of St. Justin Parish. Fr. Nolan, who had a degree from Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School and had worked as a civil engineer, was much involved in planning the new church with architects Whiton & McMahon. Built in 1931-1933, the church is an Art Deco structure and has Art Deco ornamentation in the interior as well. (more…)
Facing Bushnell Park at 55 Jewell (now 55 Trumbull) Street in Hartford is the Southern New England Telephone Company Building, built in 1930-1931. The Art Deco structure, designed by R.W. Foote, emphasizes linear compositions with geometrical ornamentation. The building was expanded in 1953 with the addition of the upper six floors, an enlargement that had been planned for in the original design. SNET relocated in the 1970s and the building was leased to other tenants, eventually becoming wholly vacant. In recent years, it has been converted into apartments and is known as “55 On the Park.”
The Steiger Building is located on the southeast corner of Trumbull and Pratt Streets in Hartford. It was built in 1926-1928 and was the second major Hartford building built by Albert Steiger of Steiger’s Department Stores. The new building was designed by Smith & Bassette to correspond in architecture and building materials with the earlier Steiger Store, built in 1920-1921 on Main Street, at the other end of Pratt Street. That earlier Main Street building has since been replaced by a parking lot, but the one on Trumbull Street survives today.
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