Few events have mobilized the entire University community as much as the announcement of the beloved McConaughy Hall’s demolition did last winter. Fueled by fierce nostalgia and a fiery will to preserve MoCon’s history, students and alumni rallied to save the old cafeteria from its eminent demise. But while it was often touched upon, protesters rarely convincingly argued that MoCon be saved for its architectural value.
The Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation considered MoCon to be “historically and architecturally significant as an expression of Connecticut Modernism.” Many others, however, have questioned the aesthetic relevance of the beloved cafeteria, including art history professor and architecture specialist Elijah Huge.

“Connecticut modernism is threatened,” Huge said. “Very few modernist buildings remain because Connecticut has become culturally conservative. Now, anything that looks like it was built in the 1950s or 60s is significant in Connecticut modernism. In a broader context, it’s a challenge to call [MoCon] significant.”
Architect Charles Warner designed the cylindrical spaceship-like structure in 1962. His design incorporated many basic aspects of modernist architecture including a lack of decoration, a glass and steel construction, and open interior spaces. It was MoCon’s interior space that Miles Bukiet ’11, creator of the hugely popular “Save MoCon” Facebook group, thought made the building important and unique.

“The quality of the space inside was so open and big,” Bukiet said. “You felt like you were in a forest, and it had a cathedral sort of feel, too. It was a really appealing space to be in.”

MoCon incorporated one last fundamental element of modernist architecture: it was designed for a specific function—in this case, to be a cafeteria. Unfortunately, its single-purpose design led to its destruction.
“Robert Venturi called buildings like MoCon ‘ducks,’” Huge said. “They were designed for one function and couldn’t do much else. MoCon was a grand social space. Usdan made it obsolete.”

The campus does not lack modernist architecture, though; just look at the equally strange and austere Center for the Arts (CFA), as Huge points out.

“Nationally speaking, the CFA is a significant building,” Huge stated.

So, was MoCon architecturally significant? It was not beloved and fervently defended because it was an important example of modernism, but rather because of its integral role in so many students’ campus experience. MoCon’s legacy is not based on its value in a relatively short aesthetic history, but on the memories and traditions that have been formed over the years.