|
Home >
Preservation News >
Around the State: Hartford
Around the State
Hartford.
One of the corporate offices that made this city the insurance capital of the world is the former headquarters of the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (“Mass Mutual”) in the Asylum Hill area. The company sold its 450,000 square-foot campus to a private investor in 2001, and the site has been vacant ever since. The main building was constructed in 1926 for the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company, to designs by Benjamin Wistar Morris, a fashionable New York architect with close ties to Hartford. Additional sections were added in the 1940s and 1971. The Georgian Revival edifice of brick and limestone is not listed on either the National or State Register.
In December The Hartford Insurance Company, located next to the former Mass Mutual complex, announced that it would buy the property and clear it to provide parking for its 7.000 employees. The company says it needs to replace current parking near the train station. The lease there is due to expire and apparently will not be renewed. Without this parking, the company says it may have to leave Hartford, as Mass Mutual did. The Hartford has a purchase option and plans to buy the site only if it can secure all necessary permits. The company has applied for a demolition permit, which in Hartford triggers a 90-day delay.
Staff members from the Hartford Preservation Alliance (HPA) and Connecticut Trust met with representatives of The Hartford and with community and city leaders. While The Hartford wants parking now, the company hopes eventually to develop the site as a mixed residential/retail/office complex. In response to this, the preservationists argued for keeping some parts of the building to incorporate in new development, with parking on site to meet their immediate need. Al Shehadi, Acquisitions Manager for the National Trust’s Community Investment Corporation, helped explain how historic tax credits could help finance redevelopment. In addition, the Connecticut Trust has awarded an Historic Preservation Technical Assistance Grant (HPTAG) to the HPA to pay for a State Register nomination for this site, which is underway.
|
