Why do Conn. cities have such bad skylines?
The trumpeting of WWE at the entrance gates to the most successful city in Connecticut just reminds me that our little state is even worse at skylines than it is at nicknames (our steady habit seems to be making uninviting skylines).
Thirty years ago, mentioning Stamford to an outsider drew the inevitable reply, “Oh yeah, that’s where the WWF is.”
Being synonymous with “professional” wrestling was as hard to break as the Iron Sheik’s “Camel Clutch” or The Undertaker’s “Hell’s Gate.” Passersby could pass by on Interstate-95 and still smell what The Rock was cooking. A 10-by-16 foot sign atop the headquarters of what morphed into WWE might as well have included the words “Welcome to Connecticut.”
At least the sign was then situated on the way out of Stamford, but the first city in Connecticut after departing New York (stifle that yip, Danburians, we’ll get to you later) seemed to deserve better optics.
WWE moved to the back seat after the world’s largest single trading floor opened across from the Stamford train station in 1997. It changed its name (Swiss Bank, UBS Warburg, etc.) more times than Dave Bautista (yup, Marvel’s “Drax the Destroyer” was once “Khan,” “Deacon Batista” and “Leviathan”). Still, Stamford embraced being known for hosting financial titans such as UBS, and later RBS.
Then the bankers were
tossed out of the ring, leaving behind a 712,000square-foot behemoth for Stamford to fill. At least passersby could point a thumb at the city and mutter, “that’s where Purdue Pharma, Jerry Springer and Philip Morris are. And isn’t that the Building Formerly Known as Trump?”
So now WWE is moving into the old UBS site, framed by massive signs that are visible from land, air and Long Island Sound. The signs look like you could reach out and touch them, with a logo so jagged you’d need a little bacitracin after doing so.
“Welcome to Connecticut. We’ll Smack You Down,” they might as well pledge.
Sure, Stamford’s skyline is a little more inviting than it was 30 years ago. At least it plugs in now. The train station looks like it was decorated with discarded LiteBrite sets from the ’70s, and there’s the stainedglass pavilion modeled on a 4-year-old’s fumbled cone of double rainbow ice cream.
But the trumpeting of WWE at the entrance gates to the most successful city in Connecticut just reminds me that our little state is even worse at skylines than it is at nicknames (our steady habit seems to be making uninviting skylines).
This all flooded over me while spending time in several of Connecticut’s cities of late, including Bridgeport, Danbury, Norwalk, Waterbury, Hartford, New Haven and
New Britain. Stop, close your eyes and picture silhouettes from I-94, I-84, etc. for these and other Connecticut cities.
Can you picture anything other than a “Twilight Zone” jumble of clock towers, a gold dome, an IKEA and grimy architecture? There’s a lot to like about these cities, but the state motto might as well be, “We may not look like much from the road but get off somewhere and check us out.”
Danbury (now you can start yipping) seems to have given its entire identity over to the Danbury Fair, which has a name that doesn’t even tell you what it is. Back when it was a fair, it featured the reputed tallest Uncle Sam in the world. So, naturally, that eye candy is now a few miles away at the Danbury Railway Museum, where no one can see it from the highway.
America’s greatest city skylines usually make clever use of bridges over water. We have plenty of water in Connecticut. Perhaps we should build a bridge to Long Island. But then we’d need a reason to go to Long Island. Maybe WWE could sponsor the bridge as a way to get to its matches in (I’m not making this up) the UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y.
St. Louis accents an otherwise pedestrian silhouette with an aspirational, welcoming arch. All we have is an endless stream of faded billboards for double arches. Even beleaguered Detroit has a more imperious skyline than anyplace in Connecticut.
Yes, skylines can be deceiving. Vegas lures you in, then picks your pocket. The most majestic belongs to Washington, D.C., but you have to pass through gateways of Hell (aka, the Capital Beltway) to get to it.
And I don’t expect Connecticut to rival Seattle, Philly or even Madison, Wis., but we seem to want to promote ourselves as the bridge between Manhattan and Boston.
I’m sure there are some people who will drive through Stamford and get excited when they see the new WWE signs.
They might even get off at Exit 7, only to discover that the only wrestling to be found here is with our identity.