New Haven, New Britan

[ctman987]

Pictures of New Haven, CT (The Elm City)

Population: 123,626

From the New Haven green (Tallest building in the pictures is the CT FInancial Center at 383 feet with 26 stories which is New Havens tallest building)

Alongside the New Haven green (Tallest building in the pictures is the CT FInancial Center at 383 feet with 26 stories which is New Havens tallest building)

Chapel Square Mall and Office Tower/ Omni Hotel

Yale University

Yale University

Yale University

These are pictures from New Britan, CT (10 minutes southwest of Hartford)

Population: 71, 538

Home to Central Connecticut State University (About 11,400 students)

Main Street

Main Street

New Days Inn hotel on Main Street

[Garris]

Thanks for the photos!

The poor Architecture School building...

Yale did a decent job with the redo to make it inoffensive, but boy, it used to be one of the ugliest buildings I'd ever seen. Like the APC building at Rhode Island Hospital here in Providence (also made of concrete), the architecture building absorbed water when it rained, with big, streaky stains until it dried. A friend of mine during college would joke that looking at that building when wet could drive depressed people to suicide...

- Garris

Providence, RI

Pround Yale alum...

[MadVlad]

Thanks for the photos!

The poor Architecture School building...

Yale did a decent job with the redo to make it inoffensive, but boy, it used to be one of the ugliest buildings I'd ever seen.  Like the APC building at Rhode Island Hospital here in Providence (also made of concrete), the architecture building absorbed water when it rained, with big, streaky stains until it dried.  A friend of mine during college would joke that looking at that building when wet could drive depressed people to suicide...

- Garris

Providence, RI

Pround Yale alum...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Unfortunately, a lot of buildings in Hartford absorb the water when it rains, it looks horrible, like someone with a stained arm-pit...

[Cotuit]

The poor Architecture School building...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The powerlines and the sad trees out front don't help it any.

[Mike D]

I especially like the photo of the Green. I've been there before. It is nice.

[Garris]

The powerlines and the sad trees out front don't help it any.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No, they certainly don't. If you're not familiar with New Haven, Cotuit, this building has always been doubly unfortunate because it's one of four sides of a critical pedestrian intersection (a Yale art museum, the beautiful Yale Rep Theater, and tons of retail filling in the intersection).

Here are some photos of the building pre-touch-up, with an actually overly generous (despite its negative tone) description from a Bluffton.edu architecture site about the architect Paul Rudolph here:

"Inspired both by Wright's Larkin Building and Le Corbusier's La Tourette, this sculptural building has been criticized for "style at the expense of content" (Susan Sontag). The asymmetrical building, on an asymmetrical site (a corner), dominates the setting with its bold towers, housing mechanical services, and huge slabs bridging the towers. The building has also been criticized for its lack of functionality and "mysterious" plan--39 different levels on seven stories."

(gotta love the Chevy Chevette in the photo!)

Now, at the risk of sounding like David Brussat (Prov folks will get the reference), compare that to the architecture of the Yale Rep across the street (photo from Hull's Art Shop on Chapel):

And compare it the the residential colleges across the street next to the art museum (from John Anderson Photography):

While I can say having seen it last weekend that it's much, much better now with the lighter surfacing, cleaner detailing, and new windows, it still stands as one of Yale big architecture mistakes (like many colleges) during the 50's to 70's...

- Garris

Providence, RI

[Cotuit]

I like the before better. The powerlines aren't as evident and the sad trees are gone, which helps, but the building itself was better before. The rehab to the windows creates this horizontal banding which de-ephasizes the verticallity of the building and makes it look squat. The sign on the after building (which I assume advertises some sort of event and is not permanent) also interrupts the verticallity and takes away from the monolithic nature of the building. The before windows make it look like some post-modern prison, but the after windows could have taken away that feel, but had lines that were primarily vertical to maintain the vertical nature of the building. The trees, aside from being sad, take away from the brutalist nature of the structure. It occupies a small enough corner of the street, that trees can be forsaken for the sake of conveying it's butalist nature. Rather than trees, some modernist, Calder-esque sculpture would be a better way to add a decorative, humanizing element to the building (as long as it continues the vertical line theme).

[SOCOM]

Anyway you slice it, that is one hideous building. It reminds me of the highrise dorms at Hofstra University.