Design
A Complicated Second Life for a Brutalist Icon
Fifteen years after IKEA demolished part of it for a parking lot, a Marcel Breuer-designed office building in New Haven has become a stage for art.
The hulking concrete building just off the I-95 in New Haven commands the attention of anyone who passes by it. That’s how Dick Lee wanted it.
As mayor from 1954 to 1970, Lee presided over the Connecticut city’s nearly unmatched embrace of urban renewal and modern architecture. When Armstrong Rubber Company decided in 1966 to build in the city’s Long Wharf Redevelopment Area, the mayor told them they’d have something tall and designed by Marcel Breuer.