Connecticut Green Restoration/Renovation

Amenta Emma Restores CT State Office Building

Connecticut State Office Building main entrance / Photo by Robert Benson Photography

Hartford, CT – Amenta Emma Architects recently restored and reimagined the 1931 office building that houses the state of Connecticut’s attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, and their staff.

Connecticut State Office Building main entry and new urban park

The Connecticut State Office Building – affectionately known as the SOB – is located in downtown Hartford’s historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. Its transformation saves a significant building and plays a pivotal role in Hartford’s urban plan that stitches historic downtown district assets to a one-mile chain of parks, plazas and the renewed Connecticut River waterfront. This adaptive reuse project that exceeds sustainability and accessibility standards, is a vibrant, modern, 21st century workplace built to carry the building’s 20th century grandeur into the 22nd.

A new two-story glass curtain wall defines a grand, new, accessible public entrance, providing transparency into the lobby.

Visitors approach the SOB through a one-acre park – the first new greenspace in Hartford’s core in over 50 years – walking on two-toned granite pavers, laid to scale in the pattern of the Connecticut River, which is visible from many of the building’s windows. The classic limestone exterior was preserved and liberated from 370 window unit air conditioners that were replaced with high efficiency heating and cooling systems.

A new two-story glass curtain wall defines a grand, new, accessible public entrance, providing transparency into the lobby with lines of sight extending through two additional glass walls opening to the building’s courtyards. The front of the building was shifted from north to east to use the site’s natural slope for accessibility. The courtyards, once inaccessible from the ground floor, were raised six feet. They now open to the cafeteria and meeting rooms at ground level, allowing for outdoor dining and indoor/outdoor meetings.

A custom Connecticut River graphic graces the wall of the collaborative seating area in the cafe.

The main entrance leads to a new double-height lobby characterized by marble walls, a grand stair connecting the two levels, and a bridge across the upper level. The lobby now matches the scale and grandeur of the building’s exterior (Previously, much of the ground floor was occupied by offices.). Other existing spaces with a great deal of character, including the historic hall and main staircases featuring ornamental flourishes such as coffered plaster ceilings, marble colonnades, brass gates, and mail chutes, were faithfully restored to their original condition.

View of renovated courtyard through the lobby

The rest of the SOB’s former labyrinthine interior was demolished. Workplaces designed specifically for the agencies that occupy them and their particular balance of focus work and collaboration now fill the seven-story, 350,000sf office. High ceilings and exposed duct work lend a contemporary feel to the civic building with nods to its history when suitable such as exposing the original terra cotta floor formwork and brick walls where possible.

Faithful restorations and reproductions of historic details were executed.

With ailing windows replaced with double-pane replicas, asbestos and lead paint abated, and every building system overhauled or replaced, the building now meets the USGBC’s standards for LEED Silver, and Connecticut’s strict High Performance Building energy efficiency requirements. The most sustainable choice of all was adaptive reuse rather than new construction. Insulation and other additions to the building’s skeleton help it achieve 50.13 kBtu/sf/yr, less than half the 111.7 kBtu/sf/yr national average.

The project team includes Gilbane, Skanska, BVH Integrated Services, Simpson Gumpertz Heger, Fuss & O’Neill, and Landworks Studio.