Connecticut Architecture. Christopher Wigren

characteristic of Connecticut suburbanization are the places that, while primarily bedroom communities, manage to maintain the appearance and atmosphere of independent municipalities. Among these are places like Glastonbury, Guilford, and Ridgefield, which have functioning small-town downtowns even though much of their citizenry works elsewhere (figure 51). Despite the overlaying of suburban development on colonial agricultural towns, these communities jealously guard their independence.

FIGURE 51. Main Street, Ridgefield. Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation

      Since the 1930s, government at every level—federal, state, and local—played an increasingly visible role in shaping the physical environment. The federal government led the way. During the Depression, it funded public works projects that provided infrastructure improvements, public buildings, and park buildings like the People’s State Forest Museum (place 76). After World War II, federal financing for homebuyers favored suburban development (see Broadview Lane, place 77), while urban renewal programs demolished and rebuilt the state’s cities. New Haven was a national leader in urban renewal, receiving more federal money per capita than any other city in the country, but nearly every Connecticut city embarked on major redevelopment efforts (see, for instance, Constitution Plaza and the Phoenix Building, Hartford, place 46, and Dixwell Plaza, New Haven, place 99). Federal highway programs had an even greater impact, affecting both cities and countryside (figure 52). Conceived to ease travel to cities, new highways also encouraged movement from them, further dispersing the state’s population.

      State and local governments followed the federal lead (in many cases they administered federal programs). The result was that, in the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning years of the twenty-first, planning emerged as a dominant force. Town planning and economic development efforts often determine what is built where, and increasingly detailed building codes determine how it is built. The near-universal adoption of zoning has driven the separation of activities by use and contributed to suburban sprawl. In many communities, zoning regulations intended to preserve rural character have in fact created a very different landscape, one in which widely spaced single-family houses sit on uniformly sized lots served by shopping centers along busy connector roads. Changes in zoning also made possible new types of development such as large condominium complexes, like Heritage Village in Southbury (place 23).

FIGURE 52. Planned route of Interstate 84, Hartford, 1960. Hartford History Center, Hartford Public Library

      Toward the end of the twentieth century, a regional planning movement began to attempt to overcome the fragmented growth patterns created by Connecticut’s patchwork of towns, but with only limited success. At the same time, new regulations protecting clean air, water, and natural features complicated large-scale infrastructure works like dams and roadways, while fostering greater attention to the natural and physical environment and the social consequences of new construction.

      The overarching architectural movement since the mid-twentieth century has been Modernism. For its proponents, Modernism was not a style but rather an entirely new way of building. To Modernists, “style” meant decoration unrelated to the structure or function of a building, merely pasted on after the real work of determining layout and construction was completed, which made it inauthentic. They wanted to get away from that approach and build “truthfully” with the latest materials and planning methods, experimenting with new plans for buildings like Ansonia High School (place 66) or with new technologies like prefabrication, seen in two early examples in New London (place 13).

      Connecticut was well situated to take part in the spread of Modernism after World War II. The western part of the state had easy access to the international cultural center of New York. Its wealthy, educated populace eagerly called on leading New York architects, as the state’s elite had regularly done for more than a century, only now the architects were Modernists such as Wallace K. Harrison, who designed the First Presbyterian Church in Stamford (place 14). Yale’s architecture program was training many of them, and bringing nationally and internationally known practitioners to teach or lecture—and get commissions. To a lesser degree, Boston and Providence played a similar role for eastern Connecticut. In New Haven, both the urban renewal program and Yale’s postwar expansion projects deliberately included up-to-date Modernist architecture by prominent leaders of the architectural profession, a model followed by other cities and institutions. These policies brought cutting-edge design to users who otherwise might not have chosen it, such as the Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ, an African American congregation that had been considering a Colonial Revival edifice before the Redevelopment Agency assigned the Modernist architect John Johansen to it (place 99).

      While New Haven was uniquely located at the intersection of academia and aggressive urban renewal, Connecticut had other, if smaller, centers of Modernism. Enclaves for like-minded pioneers popped up, often around other colleges or universities or in suburbs like Guilford or Farmington. Village Creek, in Norwalk, was founded in 1949 as a multiracial community based on equality and nondiscrimination; Modernist architecture reflected its progressive social goals (figure 53). An important circle of patronage operated in Litchfield, in contrast to that community’s well-known self-image as the ideal colonial town (place 78).

      One of the nation’s most publicized Modernist hotbeds was New Canaan, where five architects formerly associated with Harvard University settled in the late 1940s (place 5). Known as the “Harvard Five,” Marcel Breuer, John Johansen, Philip Johnson, Eliot Noyes, and Victor Christ-Janer led a flowering of Modernist architecture in the town. Seeking prestige and a progressive image, corporations and schools also enthusiastically adopted Modernism. Almost any American architectural journal printed between about 1945 and 1970 will include at least one Connecticut building, whether a school, office building, or residence.

FIGURE 53. 12 Split Rock Road, Village Creek, Norwalk, 1964. Tod Bryant

      Amid Connecticut’s well-publicized Modernist activity, it is easy to forget that a significant segment of the population resisted Modernism. Suburban residential building in particular continued to be dominated by the Colonial Revival (see the Axel Nelson House, place 22). A large portion of this was the work of speculative builders and non-architect designers, although some architects continued to produce traditional designs. They were resolutely ignored by the mainstream architectural press, so it can be difficult to find information about them and their work (figure 54).

      In the 1960s and ’70s the dividing lines softened somewhat as architects dissatisfied with the rigidity of Modernism explored ways of reincorporating traditional design into their work. Among the leaders of this Postmodernism were Charles Moore, dean of the Yale School of Architecture from 1965 to 1970, and Robert Venturi, a Philadelphia architect who occasionally taught at Yale. Venturi’s firm, Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown, designed the widely publicized Izenour House in Stony Creek in the town of Branford (figure 55). As built, the house featured a porch with supports in the form of cutout silhouettes of Doric columns with exaggerated chunky proportions, plus a window like a huge ship’s wheel—cartoonish features typical of many Postmodernist works. This game-playing opened the way for the revival of more conventionally traditional designs, although an ongoing legacy of Postmodernism was an attitude that historical styles no longer were subject to the compositional rules that previously had governed them (see Salisbury Town Hall, place 86).

FIGURE 54. Russell & Gibson Architects, Bakerville Methodist Church,