New Plan For Connecticut's 'Ugliest Building'

NEW HAVEN, CT — The Marcel Breuer Modernist building aka the Pirelli Building in New Haven could get a new lease on life as its owner Ikea plans to turn it into a 165-room hotel.

For those who aren't familiar with the building it is the strange sort-of I-shaped building off of I-95 in New Haven that looks like the architect forgot to put in a floor or two. It was named the ugliest building in Connecticut by Business Insider and is often used as a place for Ikea to hang up advertisement banners. The building does have its fans who maintain that it is a architecturally significant part of New Haven and Connecticut.

Ikea is pitching the redesign as a positive for New Haven, which is looking to develop more hotel space in the city, reports Mary O'Leary of the New Haven Register. Ikea has a store right next door in an unmistakable blue and yellow building.

Hotel La Quinta Inn & Suites is located on the same street.

Read the full Register report here.

Image via Google Maps screenshot