By ROBIN
POGREBIN
GOSHEN, N.Y. — As Modernist buildings reach middle age, many of the stark
structures that once represented the architectural vanguard are showing signs
of wear, setting off debates around the country between preservationists, who
see them as historic landmarks, and the many people who just see them as
eyesores.
The conflict has come in recent months to this quaint village 60 miles
north of New York City — with its historic harness-racing track, picturesque
Main Street and Greek Revival, Federal and Victorian houses — where the blocky
concrete county government center designed by the celebrated Modernist
architect Paul Rudolph has always been something of a misfit.
“I just don’t think it fits with the character of the county seat and the village of Goshen,” said Leigh Benton, an Orange County legislator who grew up in the area. “I just thought it was a big ugly building.”
Completed in 1967, the building has long been plagued by a leaky roof and
faulty ventilation system and, more recently, by mold; it was closed last year
after it was damaged by storms, including Tropical Storm Irene.
Edward A. Diana, the Orange County executive, wants to demolish it, an idea
that has delighted many residents but alarmed preservationists, local and
national, who say the building should be saved. The county legislature is
expected to decide whether to demolish or renovate it next month.
Those who want to save it call it a prime example of an architectural style
called Brutalism that rejected efforts to prettify buildings in favor of
displaying the raw power of simple forms and undisguised building materials,
like the center’s textured facade.
“Preservation is not simply about saving the most beautiful
things,” said Mark Wigley, the dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning
and Preservation. “It’s about saving those
objects that are an important part of our history and whose value is always
going to be a subject of debate.”
A similar debate is going on in Chicago, where preservationists have been
fighting to save Prentice Women’s Hospital, a concrete, cloverleaf-shaped 1974
structure designed by Bertrand Goldberg that the National Trust for Historic Preservation has placed on its endangered list. In New Haven, the 1972 Veterans
Memorial Coliseum was demolished in 2007 despite a
campaign to rescue it.
In Manhattan, 2 Columbus Circle, the 1964 “lollipop” building by Edward
Durell Stone, escaped demolition but was renovated in 2008 in a way that
stripped away its original facade.
Preserving charming confections from the 18th- and 19th-century can be a
struggle; convincing people to keep more recent, decidedly uncute structures
built from 1950 into the 1970s can be a battle of an entirely higher magnitude,
especially if they’ve sprung leaks.
“The phenomenon of a building that’s about 30 to 40 years old being
severely out of style and leading to people wanting to alter it or demolish it
is very real,” said Frank Sanchis, the director of United States programs at
the World
Monuments Fund page, about the Orange County Government
Center here. The fund put the Goshen building on its 2012 watch list.
Opinions are even stronger when it comes to Brutalism, a style closely
associated with the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, and one that tends to produce
weighty monoliths like the F.B.I. headquarters in Washington
and Boston City
Hall.
In an interview Theodore Dalrymple, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute who
has written about the architecture of Le Corbusier, described Brutalist
buildings as “absolutely hideous, like scouring pads on the retina.”
“One of those buildings can destroy an entire cityscape that has been built
up over hundreds of years,” he said.
Barry Bergdoll, the chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum
of Modern Art, said: “Brutalism was supposed to bring back all sorts of things
like craft — the concrete wasn’t smooth, you could feel the hand of the worker
there. But it was perceived in almost the exact opposite way. It’s one of the
great public relations failures of all time. Most people think of Brutalist
architecture literally — as aggressive, heavy, boding and forbidding.”
Rudolph, who died in 1997, was a prominent Modernist architect who also designed Yale’s Art and Architecture Building, among others. Architectural historians say the Goshen government center,
which features protruding cubes and a corrugated concrete facade resembling
corduroy, represents Rudolph at his best.
“I would easily identify this as one of his top 10,” said Sean Khorsandi, a
director of the Paul Rudolph
Foundation.
But Mr. Benton, the county legislator, called it “a world monument to
inefficiency.” Each camp has its own estimate for how much it will cost to
renovate the center — the preservation side says about $35 million, the county
says $65 million. For an additional $20 million, county officials say, they
would be able to build a new center (probably traditional) and to improve
several other county buildings. The government offices that were in the center
have dispersed around the county.
“I’m a pretty modern type of person when it comes to architecture and
paintings,” said Mr. Diana, the county executive. “If the building functioned
in the right manner and was effective and efficient, I’d leave the building
right where it is.”
Economics aside, many say the Rudolph building simply has never belonged in
Goshen and never will.
“It’s just so out of place,” said Barbara Hatfield, a longtime county
resident. “Goshen is the county seat. There’s a lot of history there.”
But others argue that the building is part of the area’s history, too.
“It reflects a snapshot in time in the late ’60s and ’70s, when our history
was turbulent,” said Patricia Turner, a resident trained as an architect who
wants to save the building. “Isn’t that just as relevant as something that
happened in 1868?”
John Hildreth, a vice president at the National Trust, said architectural
taste changes over time and then can change again.
“There was a time when people weren’t concerned about saving Victorian
houses, bungalows, Art Deco buildings — all were not favored styles,” he said.
“You have to focus on the significance of the building and not its style,
because styles will come and go. We’re at a point where we’re evaluating the
recent past and coming up against that.”
Historians also say appreciating architecture can require an education.
“It’s like saying, ‘I don’t like Pollock because he splattered
paint,’ ” said Nina Rappaport, chairwoman of Docomomo-New
York/Tri-State, an organization that promotes the
preservation of Modernist architecture. “Does that mean we shouldn’t put it in
a museum? No, it means we teach people about these things.”
But Mr. Dalrymple said the notion that the public needs to be educated to
appreciate Brutalism is like saying that people “need to be intimidated out of
their taste.”
No expertise is needed to decide that a building is ugly, he said, adding,
“It’s an aesthetic judgment.”
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