The Hartford Times Building

Hartford Times Building
The portico showing the pillars salvaged from the Madison Square Presbyterian Church
General information
Status	Redevelopment by the University of Connecticut
Type	Newspaper office and plant
Architectural style	Beaux-Arts
Address	10 Prospect Street
Town or city	Hartford, Connecticut
Country	United States
Coordinates	41°45′45.3″N 72°40′21.0″W / 41.762583°N 72.672500°W / 41.762583; -72.672500
Current tenants	University of Connecticut
Opened	1920
Owner	State of Connecticut
Design and construction
Architect	Donn Barber
Developer	The Hartford Times

The Hartford Times Building is an historic Beaux-Arts building in downtown Hartford, Connecticut built as the headquarters of the now defunct Hartford Times. The newspaper commissioned architect Donn Barber, who had designed the nearby Travelers Tower and Connecticut State Library and Supreme Court Building, to build it a new structure to house its office and newspaper plant. At the time the paper was at the height of its influence with the top circulation in the state in 1917.

The building is sited on a platform facing Burr Mall. Originally the facing mall was a street, Atheneum Square South, with the intention that the building be seen from that direction with the view flanked by the Beaux-Arts Municipal Building and Morgan Memorial addition to the Wadsworth Atheneum. The platform enables the roof line to match that of the flanking buildings and the inspiration for a columned end to an urban vista was drawn from famous Parisian examples such as La Madeleine, the Panthéon, and the Palais Bourbon. At present the view is blocked by the plantings in the mall.

When planning this structure Donn Barber, the architect, was aware of the imminent demolition of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. That church, while built only twelve years before and acclaimed as one of Stanford White's finest works, was being displaced by an expansion of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Barber salvaged not only the six green granite columns but also the pilasters, pulling them flush with the columns to transform the church's porch motif of five bays into a colonnade motif of seven bays. It proved necessary to replace the original Corinthian capitals with Ionic and to add a plinth to each column base to provide the desired height for the number of stories of the new building. The original steps, platforms and base courses are all fitted together as in the original church and the terra-cotta cornices were carefully adapted. The circular-headed windows from the 24th Street facade of the church serve as the doors of the Times Building. The openings in the arcade of the Times Building are also all repurposed windows or doors from the Church's portico and southern facade.