Southern New England Telephone Company Administration Building

Last updated
Southern New England Telephone Company Administration Building
Southern New England Telephone Company Administrative Building in New Haven, October 17, 2008.jpg
USA Connecticut location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Location within Connecticut
Usa edcp location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Southern New England Telephone Company Administration Building (the United States)
Alternative namesThe Eli
General information
StatusComplete
TypeMixed-Use
Architectural style Art Deco
Location227 Church Street
New Haven Connecticut
Coordinates 41°18′33″N72°55′25″W / 41.30917°N 72.92361°W / 41.30917; -72.92361 Coordinates: 41°18′33″N72°55′25″W / 41.30917°N 72.92361°W / 41.30917; -72.92361
Construction started1937
Topped-out1938
Estimated completion1938
Height
Antenna spire230 ft (70 m)
Roof196 ft (60 m) [1]
Technical details
Floor count17
Floor area45,720 square metres (492,100 sq ft)
Design and construction
Architect Roy W. Foote, Douglas Orr
Main contractorDwight Building Company
Southern New England Telephone Company Administrative Building
NRHP reference # 97001447 [2]
Added to NRHPNovember 24, 1997

The Eli, formerly the Southern New England Telephone Company Administration Building, is a skyscraper at 227 Church Street in downtown New Haven, Connecticut. Completed in 1938, it is the city's finest example of Art Deco architecture, and was headquarters to the Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET), which oversaw the building of the state's telephone networks. Designed by Douglas Orr and Roy W. Foote, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. [2]

New Haven, Connecticut City in Connecticut, United States

New Haven is a coastal city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut, and is part of the New York metropolitan area. With a population of 129,779 as determined by the 2010 United States Census, it is the second-largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport. New Haven is the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 862,477 in 2010.

Art Deco Influential visual arts design style which first appeared in France during the 1920s

Art Deco, sometimes referred to as Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture and design that first appeared in France just before World War I. Art Deco influenced the design of buildings, furniture, jewelry, fashion, cars, movie theatres, trains, ocean liners, and everyday objects such as radios and vacuum cleaners. It took its name, short for Arts Décoratifs, from the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes held in Paris in 1925. It combined modern styles with fine craftsmanship and rich materials. During its heyday, Art Deco represented luxury, glamour, exuberance, and faith in social and technological progress.

Douglas Orr American architect

Douglas William Orr was an American architect based in New Haven, Connecticut.

Contents

Description and history

The Eli is located at the junction of Church and Wall Streets in downtown New Haven, one block north of the New Haven Green in the city's commercial business district. It has seventeen stories, and is built out of a steel frame whose exterior is clad mainly in Indiana granite. A low pink granite wall delineates the property line on Church Street. It rises as a rectangular monolith for thirteen floors, with the upper stories stepped back in stages. The two street-facing facades have two-story entrance pavilions that project. The Art Deco styling includes designs and depictions related to communications, including Classical style human figures wielding lightning bolts. The interior lobby area, also two stories in height, continues these themes, and is richly finished in a variety of materials. [3]

New Haven Green park in New Haven, Connecticut

The New Haven Green is a 16-acre (65,000 m2) privately owned park and recreation area located in the downtown district of the city of New Haven, Connecticut. It comprises the central square of the nine-square settlement plan of the original Puritan colonists in New Haven, and was designed and surveyed by colonist John Brockett. Today the Green is bordered by the modern paved roads of College, Chapel, Church, and Elm streets. Temple Street bisects the Green into upper (northwest) and lower (southeast) halves.

The former headquarters of the Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET), the Art Deco building was completed in 1938, and was the tallest building in the city until 1966 (it is currently the tenth-tallest building in New Haven's skyline). Some 1,200 SNET employees worked in the office building after its completion. The company was one of New Haven's largest employers, and was responsible for the growth of the telephone system in the entire state. [3] Beginning in 2004, the building was converted to a luxury apartment building and rechristened "The Eli"; it now is home to 142 apartments and two storefronts. [4] [5]

The building is regarded as New Haven's "premier" example of Art Deco architecture, and displays one of the area's most extensive employment of Stony Creek pink granite. [3]

See also

National Register of Historic Places listings in New Haven, Connecticut Wikimedia list article

This is a list of National Register of Historic Places listings in New Haven, Connecticut.

Related Research Articles

Penobscot Building Detroit, Michigan

The Greater Penobscot Building, commonly known as the Penobscot Building, is a class-A office tower in Downtown Detroit, Michigan. The 1928 Art Deco building is located in the heart of the Detroit Financial District. The Penobscot is a hub for the city's wireless Internet zone and fiber-optic network.

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower skyscraper in New York City

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, colloquially known as the Met Life Tower, is a landmark skyscraper, built in 1909 and located on Madison Avenue near the intersection with East 23rd Street, across from Madison Square Park in Manhattan, New York City. Designed by the architectural firm of Napoleon LeBrun & Sons and Purdy and Henderson, Engineers, built by the Hedden Construction Company, the tower is modeled after the Campanile in Venice, Italy. The hotel located in the clock tower portion of the building has the address 5 Madison Avenue, while the office building covering the rest of the block, occupied primarily by Credit Suisse, is referred to as 1 Madison Avenue.

David Stott Building

The David Stott Building is a class-A office building located at 1150 Griswold Street in Downtown Detroit, Michigan, within the Capitol Park Historic District. It was designed in the Art Deco style by the architectural firm of Donaldson and Meier and completed in 1929.

Mercantile National Bank Building

The Mercantile National Bank Building is a 31-story, 159.4 m (523 ft) skyscraper at 1700 Main Street in the Main Street district of downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the former home of the Mercantile National Bank, which later became MCorp Bank. The design of the skyscraper features Moderne styling from the Art Deco era and was designed by Walter W. Ahlschlager. The building has a series of setbacks that is crowned by an ornamental four-sided clock along with a decorative weather spire. The Merc was the main element of a four-building complex that eventually spanned a full city block.

Downtown Stamford human settlement in United States of America

Downtown Stamford is the central business district of the city of Stamford, Connecticut, United States. Also known as "Stamford Downtown". It includes major retail establishments, a shopping mall, a university campus, the headquarters of major corporations and fortune 500 companies, as well as other retail businesses, hotels, restaurants, offices, entertainment venues, and high-rise apartment buildings.

140 New Montgomery office tower located in San Francisco

140 New Montgomery Street, originally known as The Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company Building, and, after 1984, as The Pacific Bell Building or The PacBell Building, in San Francisco's South of Market district, is an Art Deco mixed-use office tower located close to the St. Regis Museum Tower and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

National American Bank Building

National American Bank Building, located at 200 Carondelet Street in the Central Business District of New Orleans, Louisiana, is a 23-story, 325 feet (99 m)-tall skyscraper. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. The building is recognized by its golden Art Deco finial.

Seattle Tower

The Seattle Tower, originally known as the Northern Life Tower, is a 27-story skyscraper in downtown Seattle, Washington. The building is located on 1218 Third Avenue and is known as Seattle's first art-deco tower. Its distinctive, ziggurat exterior is clad in 33 shades of brick designed to effect a gradient which lightens from the bottom to the top of the building. This is said to have been inspired by local rock formations.

Kansas City Power and Light Building

The Kansas City Power and Light Building is a landmark skyscraper located in Downtown Kansas City, Missouri. It was constructed by Kansas City Power and Light in 1931 as a way to promote new jobs in Downtown Kansas City. Since then, the Art Deco building has been a prominent part of Kansas City's skyline. The structure was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River upon its completion after succeeding the Smith Tower until the completion of the Space Needle in 1962. The east façade of the building faces the Power & Light District, and the building's iconic lantern appears on promotional materials and signage for the district and even Kansas City as a whole.

Hotel Kirkwood

The Hotel Kirkwood, also known as the Kirkwood Civic Center Hotel, is a historic building located in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, United States. The building was designed by the Chicago architectural firm of H.L. Stevens & Company and built in 1930. With its completion it became the largest hotel along Fourth Street between Walnut Street and Court Avenue, along Des Moines' "Hotel Row." It also marked the emergence of the skyscraper hotel in the downtown area. The new hotel replaced a previous Hotel Kirkwood that had been built on the same location in 1862. It was located near Union Station and the Rock Island Depot. Developers and owners of the 1930 Hotel Kirkwood were E.F. Tagney and S.F. McGinn. Art Deco details are found in the building's massing, the sleek exterior geometrical detailing, and treatment of the cornice. The 12-story brick structure rises to a height of 133 feet (41 m). It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. The building has subsequently been converted into an apartment building called "The Kirkwood."

A list of skyscrapers in the city of Windsor, Ontario.

Southern Bell Telephone Company Building

The Southern Bell Telephone Company Building, now known as the AT&T Communications Building, is the main telephone exchange for downtown Atlanta, Georgia. It is located at 51 Peachtree Center Avenue, on the northeast corner of Auburn Avenue.

Nissen Building historic building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA

The Nissen Building is a 283 ft 18-story skyscraper in Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, North Carolina, built in 1927. It was the largest building in the city, and the tallest building in North Carolina from 1927 to 1929, when it was succeeded by the Reynolds Building, also in Winston-Salem. It was named to the National Register of Historic Places March 17, 1983, with a boundary increase in 2004 to include a one-story addition built in 1969. With the spire on top, its height is 102.1m.

Baltimore Gas and Electric Company Building

The Baltimore Gas and Electric Company Building is a historic office building located at Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is the former headquarters of the old Consolidated Gas, Light and Electric Power Company of Baltimore City, which was a merger at the turn of the 20th century of the former century old Gas Light Company of Baltimore with several other formerly competing gas and electric power companies which had risen in the late 19th century, to form a single metropolitan wide unified utility system. In 1955, the old cumbersome Consolidated title was jettisoned and the utility rebranded as the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BG&E).

Downtown Hartford City in Connecticut, United States

Downtown Hartford, Connecticut is the primary business district and the center of Connecticut's state government. Due to the large number of insurance companies headquartered downtown, Hartford is known as the "Insurance Capital of the World".

Eleven 80

Eleven80 is a 137 m (449 ft) tall residential skyscraper in Newark, New Jersey. Named for its address at 1180 Raymond Boulevard, Eleven 80 is located in Downtown Newark, just north of Four Corners across from Military Park. A hallmark of the Newark skyline since its construction as a 36-story office building in 1930, it is noted for its Art Deco detail and ornamentation.

Southern New England Telephone Company Building

The Southern New England Telephone Company Building is a historic high-rise office building at 55 Trumbull Street in Hartford, Connecticut. It is a twelve-story Art Deco building built in 1931 for the Southern New England Telephone Company, which occupied it into the 1990s. Now mainly residential, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.

New Jersey Bell Headquarters Building

New Jersey Bell Headquarters Building, is located in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, United States. The building was built in 1929 by the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 21, 2005. The art deco building was designed by Ralph Thomas Walker of the architectural firm Voorhees, Gmelin, and Walker. The buff brick and sandstone façade is decorated with pilasters created by sculptor Edward McCartan. Since the building's opening, soft orange lights have bathed its upper floors at night.The building is 20 stories and 275 ft (84 m) tall. The building later became headquarters for Verizon New Jersey, Inc.

Central National Bank (Richmond, Virginia)

The Central National Bank building is a 23-story Art Deco skyscraper located in Richmond, Virginia. Completed in 1929, it was one of the first skyscrapers in the city of Richmond not in the heart of the financial district. According to architectural historian Richard Guy Wilson, it and the West Hospital building, are the only two skyscrapers in Richmond to have used the fashionable Art Deco ziggurat-inspired setback, and only a few others exist elsewhere in Virginia. When the bank later changed hands, it was known as the Central Fidelity Bank. It was used as a branch bank for Wachovia Corp. until that closed in 2000. After nearly fifteen years of vacancy, it was converted into apartments, and the first resident moved into the building in mid-2016. The redevelopment is called to "Deco at CNB," a 200-apartment development by Douglas Development Corp.

References

  1. New Haven Skyscraper Diagram - SkyscraperPage.com
  2. 1 2 National Park Service (2009-03-13). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service.
  3. 1 2 3 Bruce Clouette and Hoang Tinh (July 11, 1997). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Southern New England Telephone Company Administration Building". National Park Service. and Accompanying 12 photos, exterior and interior
  4. Former SNET building finds new tenants- The New Haven Register - Serving New Haven, Connecticut
  5. Luxury apartments dress up downtown housing options | Yale Daily News
Preceded by
Union and New Haven Trust Building
Tallest Building in New Haven
19381966
60 m
Succeeded by
Kline Biology Tower