11 Most Endangered

CIGNA Campus

Year Listed: 2001
Location: , Connecticut
Current Status: Favorable
Threat: Development

The Wilde Building, CIGNA campus at Bloomfield, Connecticut.

Credit: Campaign to Save Connecticut General

Significance

When it was completed in 1957, the headquarters of the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company in Bloomfield, Conn., was immediately recognized as a milestone in the history of modern architecture. Five years later, similar praise was heaped on the headquarters of the Emhart Corporation, built just a short distance away. Now CIGNA Corporation, the owner of both buildings, wants to demolish them and turn the beautifully landscaped site into a sprawling complex of offices, stores and houses clustered around a golf course.

Updates

As part of the golf course development, CIGNA demolished the Emhart building in the summer of 2003. The Wilde building, built in 1957 by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Gordon Bunshaft for the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company redefined the American workplace. In 1999, the Wilde building was deemed to have “outlived it usefulness” by its owner CIGNA, and was proposed for demolition. After placing the Wilde building on the National Trust’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list in 2001, a national advocacy effort ensued. In May 2006, citing financial and business reasons, CIGNA Healthcare announced that it would stay in the building and undertake a major renovation to meet current “Class A” office space standards. The National Trust is currently working with CIGNA to encourage them to use federal historic preservation tax credits.