Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

James Gamble Rogers

Harkness Chapel, Connecticut College (1940)

Mary Stillman Harkness her husband Edward Harkness were philanthropists who had a mansion in New York City and a summer estate in Waterford called Eolia. Mrs. Harkness, who was a fiend of Katharine Blunt, president of Connecticut College from 1929-1943 and 1945-1946, gave the college a residence hall: Mary Harkness House, completed in 1934. In 1938 she also provided funds to build a chapel and an endowment for its upkeep. Harkness Chapel, which has a granite facade, was designed by architect James Gamble Rogers in a style he called “colonial Georgian.” Rogers was the Harkness family’s favorite architect and Mrs. Harkness was intimately involved in the details of the chapel’s construction. The nondenominational Harkness Chapel was consecrated January 14, 1940.

Prominent on the campus of the Taft School, a boarding school in Watertown, is Charles Phelps Taft Hall. It was named for Charles Phelps Taft I (1843-1929), a lawyer and U.S. Representative, who was the bother of Taft School founder Horace Dutton Taft and U.S. President William Howard Taft. Built in 1929-1930, Charles Phelps Taft Hall was designed by the firm of James Gamble Rogers. A boys dormitory, the building also contains the Woolworth Faculty Room, which was formerly the school library. Charles Phelps Taft Hall connects seamlessly with other adjacent campus buildings to form a single unified structure with a shared architectural vocabulary and materials. This structure was begun in the early twentieth century with an Arts and Crafts/Gothic building designed by Bertram G. Goodhue. The complex was then expanded by James Gamble Rogers. A recently built section, which connects to Charles Phelps Taft Hall and complements its Collegiate Gothic style, is the John L. Vogelstein ’52 Dormitory, designed by Robert A.M. Stern.

Bridgeport‘s current City Hall, at 45 Lyon Terrace, was built in 1914-1916 as Bridgeport Central High School. Designed by James Gamble Rogers, the Neoclassical structure replaced the previous High School building (built in 1882) on nearby Congress Street, which continued to serve as a High School annex until it burned down in 1948. A new Central High School opened in 1964 and the former school building became City Hall, which relocated from the old City Hall of 1854. (more…)

Thirty years before building their International Style complex in Bloomfied in 1957, the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company was headquartered in a Renaissance Revival-style building at 55 Elm Street in Hartford. Built in 1926 and designed by James Gamble Rogers, the building was inspired by the Medici-Riccardi Palace in Florence, Italy. Owned by other insurance companies after 1958, the building now houses state offices.

Designed by James Gamble Rogers and built in 1930-1931 at 127 Wall Street in New Haven, the Sterling Law Building is the building of Yale Law School. Modeled on the English Inns of Court, it features a great variety of Gothic architectural detailing. Rising impressively above the rest of the structure, with its rows of Gothic windows, is the Lillian Goldman Law Library. The Sterling Law Building, which occupies one city block, was named for John William Sterling, a corporate attorney and major benefactor to Yale University.