Hartford Times Building | |
---|---|
General information | |
Status | Houses downtown Hartford campus of the University of Connecticut |
Type | Newspaper office and plant |
Architectural style | Beaux-Arts |
Address | 10 Prospect Street |
Town or city | Hartford, Connecticut |
Country | United States |
Coordinates | 41°45′45.3″N72°40′21.0″W / 41.762583°N 72.672500°W |
Current tenants | University of Connecticut |
Opened | 1920 |
Owner | State of Connecticut |
Design and construction | |
Architect(s) | Donn Barber |
Developer | The Hartford Times |
The Hartford Times Building is an architecturally significant, early 20th-century Beaux-Arts style building in downtown Hartford, Connecticut, completed in 1920 as the headquarters of the now defunct Hartford Times. The newspaper commissioned architect Donn Barber, who had designed the nearby Travelers Tower and Connecticut State Library and Supreme Court Building, to design a new structure to house its office and newspaper plant. At the time the paper was at the height of its influence with the top circulation in the state in 1917. [1]
At the time of the building's construction, it faced a street (named Atheneum Square South) so that when seen from that direction, the building was flanked by the Municipal Building and the Morgan Memorial wing of the Wadsworth Atheneum. Architect Donn Barber set the building on a high platform so that its roofline would match that of the flanking buildings. Barber's colonnade (inspired, he wrote, by famous Parisian examples such as La Madeleine, the Panthéon, and the Palais Bourbon), made a suitable termination to the urban vista, now obscured by the trees on Burr Mall. [2]
When planning this structure, Barber was aware of the imminent demolition of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. That church, while built only twelve years before and acclaimed as one of Stanford White's finest works, [3] was being displaced by an expansion of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Barber salvaged not only the six green granite columns but also the pilasters, pulling them flush with the columns to transform the church's porch motif of five bays into a colonnade motif of seven bays. It proved necessary to replace the original Corinthian capitals with Ionic and to add a plinth to each column base to provide the desired height for the number of stories of the new building. The original steps, platforms and base courses are all fitted together as in the original church and the terra-cotta cornices were carefully adapted. The circular-headed windows from the 24th Street facade of the church serve as the doors of the Times Building. The openings in the arcade of the Times Building are also all repurposed windows or doors from the Church's portico and southern facade. [4]
The building's arcade is decorated with original murals by Connecticut artist Ralph Milne Calder, uncle to Alexander Calder whose Stegosaurus sculpture now sits in the facing mall. The Sgraffito murals are in a Renaissance style and allegorize Space, Time, Poetry, and Prose. They also illustrate the motto, "News is an immortal bubble (vagrant but outlasting those who make it,) and the press endures within." [5]
The Times occupied the facility until its demise in 1976 after which the building came under government ownership and was used as an annex to the adjacent Municipal Building. [6] It was the backdrop for speeches by four presidents, Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, and a crowd of 100,000 [7] for the final speech of John F. Kennedy's election campaign. [8]
The building had been in disuse for more than a decade and was the subject of various redevelopment proposals, including as an expansion of the Wadsworth Atheneum [9] and as a home for the Thomas Hooker Brewing Company. [10] In 2017, the site was rebuilt and expanded to provide a new home for a downtown campus for the University of Connecticut designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects. [11]
Ithiel Town was an American architect and civil engineer. One of the first generation of professional architects in the United States, Town made significant contributions to American architecture in the first half of the 19th century. His work, in the Federal and revivalist Greek and Gothic revival architectural styles, was influential and widely copied.
The Charter Oak was an enormous white oak tree growing on Wyllys Hill in Hartford, Connecticut, from around the 12th or 13th century until it fell during a storm in 1856. Connecticut colonists hid Connecticut's Royal Charter of 1662 within the tree's hollow to thwart its confiscation by the English governor-general. The oak symbolized American independence and was commemorated on the Connecticut State Quarter. It was also depicted on a commemorative half dollar and a postage stamp in 1935, Connecticut's tercentennial.
The year 1920 in architecture involved some significant events.
The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionist paintings, Hudson River School landscapes, modernist masterpieces and contemporary works, as well as collections of early American furniture and decorative arts.
Daniel Wadsworth (1771–1848) of Hartford, Connecticut, was an American amateur artist and architect, arts patron and traveler. He is most remembered as the founder of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in his native city.
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Chick Austin helped alter the way Americans looked at and thought about modern art. For starters, he organized the first Picasso retrospective in the United States, put on the first show of Surrealist art and, with Kirstein, helped engineer the immigration of choreographer George Balanchine and sow the seeds for Balanchine's School of American Ballet.
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Wampanoag Country Club is a country club in West Hartford, Connecticut. The club was created in the early 1920s by the famed golf course architect Donald Ross. His design was considered "one of his masterpieces" and the club hosted the Connecticut Open, PGA Tour-level event, shortly after its creation. In the 1950s, "a new era" was inaugurated when new clubhouse was created. The club has continued to host significant tournaments through the 21st century, including the Connecticut Amateur and the Connecticut Women's Open.
The Hartford Times was a daily afternoon newspaper serving the Hartford, Connecticut, community from 1817 to 1976. It was owned for decades by the Gannett Company which sold the financially struggling paper in 1973 to the owners of the New Haven Register, who failed to turn things around leading to its closure in 1976.
The Connecticut Museum of Culture and History (CMCH), formerly the Connecticut Historical Society, is a private, non-profit organization that serves as the official state historical society of Connecticut. Established in Hartford in 1825, the CMCH is one of the oldest historical societies in the US.
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James Goodwin Batterson was an American designer and builder, the owner of New England Granite Works from 1845 and a founder in 1863 of Travelers Insurance Company, both in Hartford, Connecticut. He introduced casualty insurance in the United States, for which he was posthumously inducted into the Insurance Hall of Fame (1965).
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The parish of St. John's Episcopal Church, Hartford, Connecticut, was formed in 1841. Its first building, designed by Henry Austin (architect), was constructed on Main Street just south of the Wadsworth Atheneum in 1842. The parish left Hartford in 1907 and is now St. John's Episcopal Church.
Henry F. Ludorf (1888–1968) was an American architect who specialized in churches and schools mostly for Polish-American Catholic clients in New England.
Donn BarberFAIA was an American architect.
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The Hartford Municipal Building, also known as Hartford City Hall, is a historic Beaux-Arts structure located at 550 Main Street in Hartford, Connecticut. Completed in 1915, it is a prominent local example of Beaux-Arts architecture, and is the third building to serve as city hall. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1981.
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