Copper Clad Condo Building Shaped Like an Actual Spaceship Has a Unit for Sale in Connecticut, and the Inside Is Just as Strange as the Outside

Copper Clad Condo Building Shaped Like an Actual Spaceship Has a Unit for Sale in Connecticut, and the Inside Is Just as Strange as the Outside

The Building Guilford Once Tried to Stop

A one-bedroom condo overlooking Long Island Sound in Guilford, Connecticut, is for sale for $779,000, and the price tag is almost beside the point. The unit sits inside a building known locally simply as the Spaceship: a copper-clad, rhombus-shaped structure raised on concrete stilts that has loomed over Whitfield Street since 1986. Unit C, at 446 Whitfield Street, went up for sale through a listing that Zillow Gone Wild shared on June 24.

Aerial view of the copper-clad 'Spaceship' condo building on stilts in Guilford, Connecticut.

A Design Fight That Made the New York Times

The building was the work of architect Wilfred Armster, commissioned by a local businessman who wanted a design unlike anything else in town, according to the Boston Globe. Guilford, a coastal town built around Colonial saltboxes and Victorian storefronts, did not take the proposal quietly. Residents packed town meetings and filed objections, a fight significant enough that it drew coverage from the New York Times at the time. The building went up anyway, on the site of a former restaurant. Guilford Patch describes it today as one of downtown Guilford’s most recognizable residences.

Inside the Hull

Unit C runs 1,672 square feet with one bedroom, two bathrooms, a fireplace in the great room, and an oversized two-car garage, according to the Zillow Gone Wild listing. Its furnace, water heater, and air conditioning have all been recently replaced, and its windows are angled to catch sweeping views of the Sound.

A Weekend Escape With a Backstory

Guilford sits roughly 90 minutes from New York City along Connecticut’s shoreline, and the Spaceship has increasingly been marketed as a getaway for city dwellers rather than a full-time residence, per the Boston Globe’s coverage. Thirteen units is a small enough building that most residents know each other, and buyers drawn to Whitfield Street tend to know exactly what they are signing up for.

Living Inside a Landmark

What started as the building nobody in town wanted has become one relatively few residents can actually buy into, and Unit C is the latest chance to try.

Willow and Hearth