Civic Center Mall
The Civic Center Mall, located in downtown Hartford, was a three level, enclosed shopping mall and office complex built in 1974 as part of a large downtown urban redevelopment project. It was the commercial portion of a four block square megastructure-type development called the Hartford Civic Center complex, which also contained a multi-purpose coliseum, an exhibition and trade show center, structured parking and a 330 room Sheraton (now Hilton) hotel.
The mall featured approximately fifty small shops and restaurants and was initially anchored by a new specialty department store, Luettgen's Ltd, created and operated by William Luettgen, who was previously the president of local department store chain, G. Fox & Co.. This anchor space was later split.
The mall contained a number of unique and national specialty shops such as a Hartford Whalers Team Store, Sam Goody, Waldenbooks, Ann Taylor and Koenig Art Emporium. A third level contained about 65,000 square feet (6,000 m2) of office space, overlooking both the mall interior and the adjacent streets.
Architecturally, the mall reflected the brutalist and insular character of many early 1970s megastructure-type projects. The exterior of the L-shaped mall was constructed of prefabricated concrete panels and was surrounded by overscaled concrete landscape planter beds that cut off any facade to the sidewalk.
Built and operated by the Hartford-based insurance company Aetna, and called "the bunker" by its critics, the mall was, moderately successful in its early years, and was an economic catalyst that for a time stabilized the decline of the downtown retail district in Hartford. Its construction was also partially credited with kicking off the office building boom that began in the late 1970s and would eventually add nearly five million square feet of new office space in the area over the following decade.
...
Wikipedia