Locals call it the Boat Building: the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Building, a Modernist office tower on Constitution Plaza in Hartford, curves in front of you. Designed by Max Abramovitz and completed in 1963, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is described as the world’s first two-sided building. Take a moment to take in its unusual and striking elliptic lenticular form: a 13‑story tower with only two curved sides, oriented roughly east–west and placed off-center on the northwest part of the elevated plaza.
Below your feet the plaza opens to service areas and a parking garage, and is partially taken up by a sunken plaza with a fountain. Office spaces with floor‑to‑ceiling windows line that sunken portion, drawing people down to water and shade. The block around you is bounded by Columbus Boulevard and State, Prospect, and Grove Streets, and the whole composition is highly visible from local highways.
Footbridges connect this elevated plaza northward to the rest of Constitution Plaza and to later developments to the east and south. Notice the sunken plaza's fountain below, where floor-to-ceiling windows draw people down toward water and shade.