Are some buildings too ugly to save? The New York Times asked in last Sunday’s paper, and spurred discussions throughout the architecture, buildings, preservation and sustainability crowds. The PreservationNation blog has a post on the issue; conversations are all over the internet. Therefore, you may be poised and ready to weigh in on this discussion; but, it is worthy of conversation as modern architecture is questioned on its historic significance and demolition of any building is considered.
Orange County Government Center in Goshen, NY. Click for source.
The building that is stirring the debate this time is the Orange County Government Center in Goshen, NY, designed by well known architect Paul Rudolph in 1967 in the Brutalist architectural style. In addition to many perceived flaws, the building was flooded by Tropical Storm Irene in August 2011 and has since been vacant. Orange County officials want to demolish the building and construct a new office complex. Interestingly, the cost of demolition and replacement far exceeds that of rehabilitation. More often, you hear about buildings being demolished because the proposal for rehabilitation exceeds new construction. (You may have your own opinions on the truth of such statements.)
When we’re talking demolition v. rehabilitation, there are so many factors at play, which is evident by the grassroots group Save the Orange County Government Center (SOCGC). This group is in favor of saving the building for reasons of architectural significance, financial and historic preservation. If you want to talk about an old building (i.e. not historic, but simply one that is already built), then sustainability and use of resources comes to the table. In this case, all factors collide.
The Orange County Government Center is now on the World Monuments Fund Watch List 2012.
The Orange County Government Center is determined to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places (i.e. historically significant) by the NY State Historic Preservation Officer. See additional (and better) photos via Arch Daily and ZeoSpot. See more of Paul Rudolph’s buildings in this NYTimes slideshow. Lloyd Alter, of TreeHugger.com, writes about the Orange County Government Center in addition to many articles on Paul Rudolph buildings, which are being demolished at an alarming rate. Clearly, this is not a new issue.
Yet, this issue is larger than the preservation and rehabilitation of a single, significant building, regardless of the architect.
As I learned from Professor Gary Stanton at Mary Washington, and who I love to quote, “Your personal taste in buildings is not an appropriate evaluation for buildings of the past.” In other words, “ugly” should never enter the conversation. Doing so is a step back (by a few decades!). If the building is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, then it is historic and significant, regardless of how you feel about its appearance. It is entirely inappropriate to bring “ugly” into the discussion about significant architecture; it belittles historic preservation and adds to the false belief that preservationists only want to save the “pretty” buildings, thereby making everything look perfect. That is incorrect.
However, let’s be clear: can you talk about ugly and big box stores? Sure. Go ahead. That subject will come up again in our lifetimes. But you cannot compare an architect designed Brutalist building to a generic box of a building. Not every building – no matter the architectural style – is historic. Perhaps it is better to say that in terms of historic preservation, you cannot compare historic buildings to old (or not old!) buildings.
I’ll admit; I am not fond of Brutalist architecture. But my opinion does not matter in the grand scheme of our architectural history. I can appreciate the building for its architecture. I compare it to what I learned in film studies in college: a movie can be good because of its cinematography, its writing, its directing, etc., but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Or I can like a movie that isn’t considered good. You have to understand the difference. In the same line of thinking, there are buildings I like that are no historically significant, and there are historically significant buildings that I do not like. Does that make sense?
As many have said, society once despised the Queen Annes and Shingle styles of the Victorian Era, or the streamlined Art Deco of the 1930s. Architecture styles exist because society wants to attempt new design and to change its surroundings. If we collectively wiped out entire styles because we were tired of them, then the world would continuously look exactly the same. And where would be now? We’d all be living in McMansions or high rise towers.
The morale of the story? Please do not use “ugly” in your vocabulary when you are discussing historically significant buildings. It has no place. Keep your personal opinions to yourself, which should not affect a building’s determination of significance.
Preservation in Pink 
The federal building in Indianapolis (where I live) is of the brutalist school and let me just say that if a natural disaster destroyed it I don’t think I’d shed a tear. But you’re right; just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not architecturally and historically significant.
I don’t know many people who prefer Brutalism over other architectural styles, but maybe in time? It certainly isn’t the friendliest of styles, but if the building is a good representative of the style and what the architect meant to convey through that style, then I can appreciate it.
This is a well-thought out piece on drawing the distinction between the value of something, and whether one personally appreciates the style of the valued object. I kind of like the quirkiness of the building and that it does not look like a big old square box with columns. Being in the south, I see a lot of that–they’ll build a tin pre-fab and stick a facade on the front with columns.
Thanks! And I know just you meant — those prefab boxes with their interpretation of “character” are terrible. And although I’m not a fan of brutalism, this quirky building is very interesting – way more so than anything else someone would build, I’d bet.
I work every day in an American Brutalist building at the University of Pittsburgh; as someone at Yale once said of Yale’s Sterling Library, it’s better to work in the building than to have to look at it! There is a photo of the building at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SchoolofInformationSciencesPitt.jpg
peace!
Ellen Detlefsen
thanks Ellen! So, do you like working in the building? For some of the Brutalist buildings, the complaint is that they are not user friendly, so to speak.
The building was designed as open plan space (think “cube farm” before we knew what that was!)…when the University acquired the building in the late 1960s, they threw up a lot of interior walls and chopped up the space. The first two floors were then added in the mid-70s and ate up what was a lovely patio as well. Sigh. There are signs of real eqalitarian planning, however; small offices for secretaries, TAs, and adjunct faculty have huge windows, while corner offices for deans, tenured faculty, and big shots have narrow clerestory windows . There are real problems with climate control, to boot. Overall, however, I like being there because it’s a historic anomaly on campus and I have a big office filled with piles and piles of stuff. There are days when I think I should surreptitiously plant kudzu around the pillars/legs and let the whole thing get covered in green. From a user- friendly standpoint, it’s not bad—the bathrooms are uniformly buried in the stairwells and we always know where they are, the elevators work, and there is lots of wall space for posting stuff. 😉 And, best of all, the iSchool has a whole building, whereas on most campuses, the iSchool and/or LIS program only has a couple of floors in some otherwise anonymous academic building. TMI?