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September 20, 2005

Paging Miss Irwin

To follow up on my entry on the SNET building on John Street, I learned from a retired former resident that the penthouse on the top floor was occupied by the Sunshine Club, presided over by a Miss Susan Irwin, at least in the 1930s. He was a little boy at the time, and he's not sure today what the Sunshine Club was or what Miss Irwin did (if indeed that's the correct spelling). Can any readers help me out?

Posted by lsteele on 3:51 PM | Comments (2041)

And it's beige, no less!

I was about to write about a sprawling, fanciful Victorian house that I drive by every day. It is such an unusual house, with unexpected little gables and shapes, an asymmetrical and odd but somehow charming house -- probably built in Barnum's day. It had been damaged in a fire, but I was heartened to see repairmen there fixing it up. Then my heart sank.

Today the beige vinyl siding, already puckered and with obvious seams, started going up. At least they werent' tearing it down, I say to myself. But there goes the idea I had for a new blog entry. I wanted to look up the address and maybe find out a little about its history. (I've been doing the same thing for my ca. 1938 house in Black Rock.)

I'll have to find another fanciful Victorian house on which to perform my urban archeology. I know there are plenty in town, but it will take a day or two to get over my disappointment. Geez, beige!

Posted by lsteele on 3:38 PM | Comments (34)

September 14, 2005

A hidden jewel

The Southern New England Telephone building is a hidden jewel, something I would not have even noticed if it had not been built behind the Post building. I'm not talking about the beige and gray structure with the big SBC sign on it, where people go to pay their bills or buy equipment. I'm talking about its forgotten precedessor across the street.

How nice to come across such uplifting architecture on a forlorn little side street.

Although its role has been usurped by a more modern and mundane structure across John Street, this building is far more elegant, built with care and thought. It's an art deco beauty, with embellished Tudor arches and small friezes depicting a Bell System world wired for the 20th century. It's as if they were building a small cathedral to modern technology.

Today, these details are overlooked since the public is routed across the street to do business with the phone company. The structure doesn't really call attention to itself, and that part of town doesn't get much foot traffic. The front door is locked, but if you peer in the front door, you see a security door, a trophy case and an American flag on a stand. I've only seen technicians enter or leave.

I'm grateful to Seth Bloom, a spokesman for SBC who was able to provide these details on the building:

* The building was erected for the Southern New England Telephone
Company (now SBC Communications Inc.) on a site which had been occupied by a late nineteenth-century brick row house complex.
* The building was designed by Mr. R. W. Foote, a Connecticut
architect, who designed several other telephone buildings located in
various parts of the state. [The administration building in New Haven is also his.]
* Ground was broken on November 1, 1928, and the building was
dedicated in mid-October of 1930.
* The building follows the modern vertical type of architecture
and the exterior is faced with blocks of Indiana limestone in varying
shades of buff and gray, giving the structure an unusually appealing
appearance of life and character.
* It is a 7-story stone-veneered steel-frame office tower with a
flat roof topped by a small penthouse. The building has a symmetrically designed front elevation with a wide, slightly projecting 7-story central pavilion. The sides of the window recesses are elaborated with raised courses of stone.
* The majority of the decorative elements of the building are
found on the first and the base of the second story. These elements
include Tudor-arch door and window openings and Art Deco-style cut stone designs which decorate the edge of the central pavilion flanking the second story windows and the panels above the two entrances.
* The building remains a good example of a large, pre-Depression
office tower featuring exterior walls of cut limestone and Gothic
Revival, Tudor and Art Deco exterior details.

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Posted by lsteele on 3:16 PM | Comments (1539)