COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS

NORWICH, CONNECTICUT

Downtown Norwich is rife with great architecture. It positively OOZES cool buildings. Some date from colonial times.

 

Some are from more modern times.

 

Norwich has also suffered from what much of the industrial Northeast has experienced; changes in economic conditions. What started as a shipping center in the 18^th and 19^th centuries morphed into a center of specialty manufacturing by the turn of the 20^th century. The might and profit of the mills birthed many beautiful multi-storied commercial buildings in the hilly downtown, and place positively buzzed with commercial life.

Alas, as happened with the steel, furniture, and clothing businesses in other parts of the country, the expansion of overseas trade ended much of the manufacturing done by the local mills. Some mills have been converted to other uses, some sit empty. Their future is uncertain, but it is likely many will be put to other uses at some time.

It’s just too expensive to knock the damn things down; they’re all built like brick chickenhouses. Hopefully they’ll have a fabulous reuse.

               Abandoned Textile Mill, Taftville, Connecticut, a few miles from Norwich

And where there are successful mills, the commercial districts are fairly opulent. So it is with downtown Norwich. Sadly, though, many of the buildings sit idle, vacant, and unused. Great bones, few tenants. The Norwich Community Development Corporation, a local nonprofit that advocates for the restoration and reuse of the commercial district structures, has a plethora of economic incentives and programs to help investors make profitable use of these buildings.

But there are a lot of them, and some owners are more responsible than others.

My featured building for this post is the Plaut-Cadden Building.

 

The storefront was boarded up when this picture was taken in September of 2012, and it likely still is. At five stories, it is of middling height for this town of 40,000 souls, but it has some absolutely wonderful features. I only wish I took better pictures of them.

I’m sure the building is unoccupied, and several aspects have been altered. I have no idea if the weathered wood window frames are original (probably) but the vertical planks above the awning are undoubtedly an addition. Either that, or they are the backing for a veneer long since gone, perhaps enameled sheet metal as in Young’s Block. The weathered condition of the window frames saddens me, but as all the window designs are uniform, I imagine they are original (or all replaced at the same time, which I doubt). The transoms are all pretty much uniform through the second and third floors, though on the second story they are divided and on the third they are not.

The horizontal brown stripe above the second story window is hardly decorative, but appears to be a large piece of steel that spans the larger windows below and carries the weight of the building above. I just wonder if it had another covering at an earlier time.

But it is the semi-rococo masonry above the third floor that..floors me. The interior detail is nearly Greek, with its squared designs, but the Egyptian seems to shine through as well. The whole thing, when viewed from a distance, lends itself to Morocco or Algiers.

 

Then the builders topped the whole thing with a magnificent molded cornice made from pressed sheet copper and sent me reeling.

See what there is in the city if you just look around? I wonder how many people walk by this building every day without noticing those elements. I nearly got run over just trying to photograph them.

Downtown Norwich is a treasure just waiting to be discovered. To be invested in. To be turned into a go-to destination. It reminds me of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, a town like no other. Built upon a steep mountainside, this healing-water city from the 1880s was built from local carved stone and baked brick, with each two-story building growing to five on the lower slope. It enjoyed a booming economy until the patent-medicine/healing waters craze of the early 20^th century faded. Then the buildings sat empty until groups of hippies came through in the 1960s and pretty much bought up the town. They opened artist’s studios and small restaurants. They dressed up the town with flowerbeds and made sure the word got out among the Hippie Elite. And they came. And they stayed.

Eureka Springs is now known worldwide as a cool, hip, fun destination.

All because of a few longhairs, some vision, and hard work.

I think Norwich, with its fine waterfront, great architecture, winding, hilly streets, and great location, could be a far cooler destination than Eureka Springs.

Go there. You’ll see.