A Brutal Reminder of our Past

I don't post much about architecture, my chosen profession, but the renovation of Paul Rudolph's government center in Orange County, New York, caught my eye. Brutalism is not everyone's cup of tea, but as far as such buildings go this one was quite modest in scale and had served the county well for decades until it was closed due to hurricane damage in 2011.

There were many proposals on the table, including one by a prominent New York architect who offered to buy the Rudolph building and convert into an artist colony, if he was given the commission for a new civic structure. The county executive nixed the idea and slated the building for demolition in late 2015. However, the legislature overruled him, preferring a more cost-effective renovation and expansion of the existing structure instead.

The building is listed in the World Monuments Fund, as it is considered one of Paul Rudolph's best works. Zaha Hadid wrote admiringly of it last year,

"As a center for civic governance, it enacted democracy through spatial integration, not through the separation of elected representatives from their constituents. Many similar projects around the world have also suffered neglect; yet sensitive renovation and new programming reveal a profound lightness and generosity, creating exciting and popular spaces where people can connect. Rudolph's work is pure, but the beauty is in its austerity. There are no additions to make it polite or cute. It is what it is."

Not everyone thought so well of Brutalism. Jane Jacobs felt it was destroying NYC and many other cities around the country, which led her to write The Death and Life of Great American Cities. However, ferro-concrete construction was a low-cost solution to rapidly expanding civic and housing needs in the late 1950s, and many city officials, including Robert Moses in NYC, promoted Brutalist architecture.

Granted, the results were sometimes terrifying, but Paul Rudolph made Brutalism human in scale, ranging from his modern Florida houses to his Yale Art and Architecture Building. It may have been a "perplexing legacy," as Herbert Muschamp wrote in this 1997 obituary, but it was a very important one, as Rudolph had a big influence on succeeding generations, including yours truly.

I'm happy to see the Orange County government center was spared. If nothing else it serves as a unique marker, especially now that it has gotten all this attention.

Comments

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

Search This Blog