Country Life

Many a corporation has found Manhattan and other big cities too crowded, and has shifted its corporate offices to the country. Now, the movement is spreading to smaller cities. Last week the Connecticut General Life Insurance Co., which has outgrown its headquarters in Hartford (pop. 177,397), announced that it will build a $10 million ranch-type office building on 268 rolling acres of farmland five miles northwest of Hartford. It found that it could not only save on the cost of building, but could give its employees many more facilities than in a city headquarters, thus make it easier to get help.

The three-story central building, designed by Manhattan's Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, will have 60-ft.-wide work spaces, movable acoustical partitions, and horizontal and vertical conveyer belts for interoffice mail. There will be escalators, patios, glass walls, a cafeteria cantilevered over a reflecting pool (ice-skating rink in winter), a 400-seat theater, bowling alleys, an employees' store, tennis courts and a babbling brook. Executives will have a penthouse-topped wing, connected with the main building by a three-story, glass-enclosed bridge.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.