It’s not easy to get inside most of Paul Rudolph’s buildings, especially when they keep disappearing. The works of this baroque brutalist, who was active until his death in 1997, have been steadily demolished over the past few decades — his Riverview High School in Sarasota in 2009, the Shoreline Apartments in Buffalo in 2020, his Burroughs-Wellcome Building in North Carolina the following year. Multiple Rudolph houses have been lost in the same period. Others remain at risk; the fate of his still-polarizing Boston Government Service Center is exceptionally unclear. Nature has been cruel as well, washing away his Sanderling Beach Cabanas in Sarasota in a 2024 hurricane.
New York has a few survivors, including his Tracey Towers in the Bronx, which anchor the north end of the Grand Concourse, and his former penthouse at 23 Beekman Place, which is on sale for nearly $16 million (you can see it briefly in The Royal Tenenbaums as Ben Stiller’s residence). Tom Ford owns his Hirsch House in Manhattan (which was formerly owned by Halston — you can see an interior mockup in the Netflix series). But good luck getting inside either of those unless you have a larger wallet or better connections than most of us.
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It wasn’t easy saving the Modulightor building, which once housed the architect’s offices. But now it holds much more. |
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And a properly huge one-bedroom on West End Avenue. |
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A pied-à-terre in a 1925 building overlooking the East River channels Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Venice. |
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New York is bringing back its classifieds, so you can buy a vintage Ikea light or a garden trug from a fellow subscriber — or submit your own listing. |
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