Hartford Seminary: The building

In 1972, Hartford Seminary gave up its role as a traditional residential divinity school and established itself as an interdenominational theological center. To accommodate its changed needs, the Seminary decided to sell its campus and build a single structure that would house all of its activities and at the same time project a new image of scholarship and service.

Post-modern architect Richard Meier was selected by the Board of Trustees to design the new home for Hartford Seminary. Construction began in 1978 with completion in 1981.

The new building includes a large meeting room, a chapel, a library, classrooms and areas for part-time and full-time faculty, as well as workrooms and offices.

One of Richard Meier's first public designs, Hartford Seminary, after 20 years, remains a symbol of both forward-looking research and education and open interfaith dialogue.

"If any religious symbol can be said to dominate Richard Meier's design for Hartford Seminary, it is the primordial emblem of creation: light. Whether silhouetted against a cloudless summer sky or wrapped in the haze of a New England winter, this low white building is an arrestingly luminous presence...Transposed to full scale, Hartford Seminary displays a harmonious ordering of calm, simple volumes, and a modulation of radiant spaces unprecedented in Meier's work."

-Architectural Record January 1982