Bridgeport Center (also known as the People's Bank Building) is a continuous complex of low to mid-rise office buildings in downtown
Bridgeport, Connecticut. The complex served as the headquarters of
People's United Financial
People's United Financial, Inc., was an American bank holding company that owned People's United Bank. The bank operated 403 branches in Connecticut, southeastern New York State, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire. It was the secon ...
, now a subsidiary of
M&T Bank
M&T Bank Corporation (Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company) is an American bank holding company headquartered in Buffalo, New York. It operates 950+ branches in 12 states and Washington D.C. across the Eastern United States, from Maine to Vi ...
. It is to serve as the regional headquarters of M&T Bank in
New England
New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
. It was designed by
Richard Meier & Partners Architects LLP and finished construction in 1989. The complex was built in part of efforts to revitalize the city's Downtown. Perhaps best known for its central tower, this 18-story
postmodern
Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...
style building, at tall, is the tallest building in Bridgeport. It is adjacent to the
Barnum Museum.
The building is located at 850 Main Street on the site of the First National Bank Building, which shared the same address.
Law firm Pullman & Comley LLC also has space in the complex.
Design
Bridgeport Center has a gross total of of interior space.
The form of the building consists of a continuous fabric of low to mid-rise office buildings. A seven-story parking garage resides on the eastern portion of the building's base, with access to the lobby
atrium and elevators. The ground floor also houses a People's United Financial branch.
Tower
An 18-story tower rises from the complex, clad with
steel
Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon that demonstrates improved mechanical properties compared to the pure form of iron. Due to steel's high Young's modulus, elastic modulus, Yield (engineering), yield strength, Fracture, fracture strength a ...
and
granite
Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...
facades. The southern face of the tower is primarily made of granite and is in the shape of a
rectangular prism
A rectangular cuboid is a special case of a cuboid with rectangular faces in which all of its dihedral angles are right angles. This shape is also called rectangular parallelepiped or orthogonal parallelepiped.
Many writers just call these " ...
, with a 1x2x2
grid
Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to:
Space partitioning
* Regular grid, a tessellation of space with translational symmetry, typically formed from parallelograms or higher-dimensional analogs
** Grid graph, a graph structure with nodes connec ...
shape of thick granite pillars forming the tower's distinguishing roof piece. To the north of the granite portion of the tower, a wider white portion holds most of the tower's area. On the west face, this part of the building has a central curve inward. The roof of this portion contains two
mechanical penthouses that are stacked on top of each other, each having a greater setback than the last.
In popular culture
* The building is featured on a
plaque
Plaque may refer to:
Commemorations or awards
* Commemorative plaque, a plate, usually fixed to a wall or other vertical surface, meant to mark an event, person, etc.
* Memorial Plaque (medallion), issued to next-of-kin of dead British military p ...
on
Library Way in
Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan, serving as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Building, the ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
See also
*
List of tallest buildings in Connecticut
This list of tallest buildings in Connecticut includes every building in the U.S. State, state of Connecticut that is at least tall.
The tallest building in Connecticut is City Place I in Hartford, Connecticut, Hartford which is tall and h ...
*
Barnum Museum
*
Park City Plaza
Park City Plaza (also known as 10 Middle Street) is an office building in Downtown Bridgeport, Connecticut, Bridgeport, Connecticut. The building serves as the headquarters of the Trefz Corporation and their subsidiary company, Trefz Properties. ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bridgeport Center (Bridgeport, Connecticut)
Buildings and structures in Bridgeport, Connecticut
Office buildings in Connecticut
Headquarters in the United States
Office buildings completed in 1989