Submitted by WA Contents

Gwathmey Siegel Buyer Looks to Purchase a Paul Rudolph Building

United Kingdom Architecture News - May 07, 2014 - 10:15 3808 views

Photo by Sean Hemmerle, via Graham Foundation Paul Rudolph's three-story Orange County Government Center in Goshen, New York, completed in 1970, has 87 roofs.

The long-running saga over Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center—which officials have been threatening to demolish for more than a decade—took perhaps its strangest turn last week: Gene Kaufman, an architect best known for designing colorful towers for national hotel chains on the West Side of Manhattan, offered to buy the building.

At a meeting of the County Legislature on May 1, Kaufman offered to purchase the Rudolph building, which has been closed since 2011, and convert it to private use, perhaps as artists’ studios. In a letter to the legislature, he said he would add the building “to the tax roles (sic).” But there’s a condition: Kaufman, who bought Gwathmey Siegel & Associates in 2011, two years after the death of founder Charles Gwathmey, and now calls his firm Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman & Associates Architects, wants to design a new government building adjacent to the Rudolph masterpiece, completed in 1970 on Main Street in Goshen, New York.

Nancy Hull Kearing, founder of the Taxpayers of Orange County, an advocacy group trying to save the building, says that she is “very enthusiastic” about Kaufman’s offer. “Of course I’ve heard of Gwathmey Siegel.” In an email, she asked supporters to write to the county executive, Steven M. Neuhaus, urging him “to make an offer to Mr. Kaufman.” Kearing, a painter, was particularly intrigued by the possibility of moving artists into the building. “Those familiar with SOHO in NYC and Brooklyn,” she wrote, “know that when artists move in to a community things begin to boom and blossom.”

But just last week, the County Legislature voted 18-3 in favor of a plan to restore much of the building to its former use, though the proposal would also entail demolishing part of the building and tacking on 61,000 new square feet. The plan is the work of designLAB Architects, the Boston firm that performed similarly invasive surgery on parts of Rudolph’s University of Massachusetts campus in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts. “We don’t support the demolition,” says Kearing. “Selling the building?," she added, "is preferable."...Continue Reading

> via Architectural Record

Submitted by WA Contents

Gwathmey Siegel Buyer Looks to Purchase a Paul Rudolph Building

United Kingdom Architecture News - May 07, 2014 - 10:15 3808 views

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