Preserving the Recent Past - Buildings of Paul Rudolph

Modern architect Paul Rudolph's buildings have been in the news a lot lately. There was a flurry of activity surrounding the recent demolition of a Rudolph-designed house in Westport, Connecticut a month or so ago, as well as the threatened demolition of the Blue Cross/Blue Shield building in Boston, Massachusetts (to make room for a new 80-foot tower) and Riverview Highschool in Sarasota, Florida.

Today's New York Times continues this trend, with A Road Trip Back to the Future, Fred A. Bernstein's interesting, well-illustrated, and meaty article describing his recent tour of Rudolph buildings in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey, including the Orange County Government Center in Goshen, NY; University of Massachusetts' Dartmouth Campus, where "two vast, twisting [concrete] buildings circle a campanile;" Jewett Art Center at Wellesley College; the Government Service Building, First Church, and the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Building in Boston, Massachusetts; Yale Art and Architecture Building in New Haven, Connecticut; and Tracey Towers in New York City. A slide show of the buildings is included.

In the Arts Briefly column, today's Times also reports that Boston's Landmarks Commission imposed a 90-day demolition delay on the Blue Cross/Blue Sheild Building on March 13, 2007, and that architect Renzo Piano has withdrawn from the project to build the 80-story tower on the building's site. The Times reports that the project's developer said that "the Boston firm CBT Architects intended to 'implement Piano's design, making appropriate refinements as needed during the design review process.'"

To review many more recent New York Times articles about Paul Rudolph and his architecture, click here to visit the Times Topic link.