#brutalnyc

[nyc-urbanism]

From our #BrutalNYC survey: One Police Plaza# ​The New York Police Department's​ headquarters at One Police Plaza was the heart of the Civic Center's postwar revitalization that also saw the creation of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Murry Bergtraum High School, Chatham Green, Chatham Towers and a public plaza, all designed by Gruzen & Partners. Previously the Department had been located north of the civic center area, in a block-long Beaux-Arts building on Centre Street. To connect the new development with Park Row, the street was lowered, curving under the anchorage of the Brooklyn Bridge. Today this area has been closed to cars and surrounded by checkpoints in an attempt to secure the base of the bridge and One Police Plaza. Duane Street and New Chambers Street (through the Municipal Building) were also closed and paved with red brick. The new headquarters consisted of a​ brutalist​ ten-story red brick cube with a matrix of punched-out windows, sitting atop a multi-leveled base. The corners of the cube cantilever over the base, exposing the concrete structural elements. The mostly windowless bases house a garage, holding cells, and a shooting range. The surrounding landscaped plaza designed by architect M. Paul Friedberg was praised by critics, helping to tie the new buildings together, creating a successful public space surrounding these new developments.​#BrutalNYC​ nycurbanism.com/brutalnyc for more #Brutal_Architecture #brutalism #brutalist (at One Police Plaza- NYC Police Headquarters) https://www.instagram.com/p/Co0Xbjquh8i/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[lukasnovo]

33 Thomas Street aka AT&T Long Lines. Ultra secure telephone exchange/data centre and perhaps also a NSA mass surveillance hub 🔭⁠

[nyc-urbanism]

Lower Manhattan’s notorious federal jail is finally closing. The brutalist Metropolitan Correctional Center, or MCC, l is the maximum-security federal jail that has seen its share of famous residents including most recently, Jeffrey Epstein. MCC was the final piece of the monumental Civic Center development that included One Police Plaza, Murray Bergtraum High School, 350 Pearl Street, Chatham Towers and Chatham Green. Part of a federal program that commissioned additional jails in Chicago and San Diego of the same name, Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan replaced the former Federal House of Detention at 427 West Street at West 11th Street. According to The New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger, unlike the West Street jail and the Tombs up the block, MCC was supposed to be “the most progressive” and “incorporate the most advanced theories of prison architecture.. each unit is meant to stress human scale. ” The design was heralded for its lack of prison-looking elements including guard towers, barbed wires, chain-linked fences, and large windowless walls, fitting in with the surrounding office buildings. MCC has housed famous federal inmates over the years including drug lord El Chapo, Jeffrey Epstein, Bernie Madoff, John Gotti, terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There have also been escape attempts over the years, the most publicized being in 1981 when a stolen helicopter unsuccessfully attempted to lift an inmate off the rooftop recreational center. Another attempt, this one successful, involved two inmates lowering themselves down from the second-story with an electrical cord. The men remain missing to this day. (Part of our #BrutalNYC project, documenting #brutalist #architecture in NYC. Visit nycurbanism.com.brutalnyc for more) (at Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTNKz5nHUAO/?utm_medium=tumblr

[nyc-urbanism]

This windowless skyscraper was designed to resist a nuclear fallout – holding up to 1,500 people for two weeks, with 250,000 gallons of fuel to power generators, water, and food for the occupants. 33 Thomas Street, also known as the AT&T Long Lines Building is one of Manhattan's most unusual skyscrapers - a building made for machines, not people. Designed by architect John Carl Warnecke in 1969 for AT&T, 33 Thomas is 550 feet tall, clad in flame-retardant red granite panels, placed over precast concrete slabs. The building’s stepped massing, extruded volumes, and uniform rugged materiality represent the hallmarks of brutalist architecture. Inside, 33 Thomas houses an important telecommunications hub, which was the world's largest long-distance phone processing center when it was built. One of the major "4ESS switches" in the skyscraper acts as an "international gateway" for long-distance traffic. A recent investigation by The Intercept exposed the telephone switches inside 33 Thomas have come under the control of the National Security Agency, making the mysterious building one of the most important surveillance sites in the United States. To read more about the history of the skyscraper and its role in the NSA, visit Brutal NYC our survey on brutalist architecture in New York City. nycurbanism.com/brutalnyc (link in bio) #Brutalism #Brutalnyc #brutalist_architecture #brutalismo #brutalist #modernarchitecture #tribeca #urbanism #brutalist_architecture #betonbrut #concrete #modern #urbanism #urban #tribeca #manhattan #nyhistory #nychistory #nycarchitecture #33thomas #nsa #concretemodernism #modernism #skyscraper #skyline #nycurbanism (at 33 Thomas Street) https://www.instagram.com/p/B9AlCBgnYjP/?igshid=11hhffv1qk1lw

[nyc-urbanism]

(White Plains 3/3) Following the demolition of 130-acres in its historic center, the City of White Plains unveiled its $33‐million Westchester County Courthouse, Westchester One office building, and $5.5 million Galleria mall. The center city had been reduced to rubble, only to be rebuilt for the modern age of the automobile. By the 60s, the current Library had outgrown its small brick structure, designed in 1908. As part of the urban renewal development’s civic center, the town was promised a new library that would be four times the size of the old one. The $13 million White Plains Library opened in 1974, surrounded by vehicle ramps accessing the underground parking and stepped back from the street by a barren public plaza. The #brutalist library was one of the first urban renewal buildings completed. Cast in concrete and two stories high, the horizontal structure featured vertical concrete panels giving the facade a linear rhythm. The 3-story structure appears as a setback to the mid-rise civic monoliths that surround its barren plaza. “The impressive vertical thrust of the courthouse creates a dramatic contrast with the horizontal simplicity of the library, guarded by the massive silhouette of the Telephone Co. Building. Despite their completely different individual concepts, the predominantly linear rhythm of their external appearance connects them to the exciting cityscape. The Courthouse and Library represent a happily counterbalanced architectural marriage that could not exist effectively alone.” (Club Dial) In the three decades, White Plains had been transformed into a modern edge city, almost unidentifiable from its original appearance. Despite the loss of the city's historic character, during this time many major corporations relocated from New York City to suburban locations like White Plains, and at its peak in the 1980s at least fifty Fortune 500 companies had headquarters in Westchester and nearby Fairfield County. Visit #BrutalNYC for more from our survey https://www.instagram.com/p/CHqfqnEnsmd/?igshid=1igoy164hyi3s

[nyc-urbanism]

#FacadeFridays – The Met Breuer has officially closed for good, with the collection moving back to the Metropolitan Museum's Fifth Avenue location in anticipation of reopening in August. The building will now house the Frick Collection, while the institution renovates its gilded Fifth Ave mansion. While housing the Met's contemporary art collection in Marcel Breuer's modernist masterpiece, the museum was a money loser and by transitioning the last three years of their lease to the Frick, the Met will save an estimated $45 million. The sublease to the Frick will end in 2023, when the owner of the landmark, the Whitney, will decide its fate. Marcel Breuer's Whitney Museum opened in 1966, giving the contemporary art museum its own modern identity. Wrapped in concrete and faced in 1,500 granite slabs each weighing 500 to 600 pounds, the building stands out from the surrounding limestone, brick and brownstone townhouses, and apartment buildings. Resembling an upside-down ziggurat, the front of the structure is surrounded by a moat looking trench, occupied by a sunken sculpture court, creating a gap between the sidewalk and the entrance, only bridged by a concrete span connecting Madison Avenue to the lobby. It was said that #Breuer didn’t want any windows at all for his bunker-like museum, settling for artificial lighting, which would have provided a better display for the artwork inside. For the interiors, Breuer used a vast array of materials including terrazzo, board-formed and bush-hammered concrete, bluestone for the floors, walnut parquet, and suspended precast #concrete coffers for the ceiling. The museum’s four floors offer 26,7000 square-feet of gallery space, 21,500 square feet of storage, a restaurant, and a 120 person film gallery. In 2016, the Whitney Museum moved into their new Renzo Piano-designed home on Gansevoort Street, leaving the Madison Avenue building to the Metropolitan Museum of Art who renamed it The #MetBreuer after the #brutalist architect. Before the Met moved in, the building underwent a $600 million renovation led by architects Beyer Blinder Belle. For more on the Met Breuer visit #BrutalNYC #linkinbio (at The Met Breuer) https://www.instagram.com/p/CB50BVbnQGj/?igshid=1gaby9fiqmjez

[nyc-urbanism]

#FacadeFridays – Endo Laboratories in Garden City, designed by Paul Rudolph in 1962. We had the pleasure of visiting this brutalist complex – part of our Brutal NYC survey – last week and it is an incredible work of art. Dubbed the “Fortress for Pharmaceuticals,” the castle-like structure featured Rudolph’s iconic corduroy concrete facade. Endo is a highly expressive machine choreographing the most effective use for its client. Rudolph expresses Endo’s functionality, then adds an additional layer that is sculptural – a material expression to create art. Endo merges interlocking volumes and forms to articulate the spatial specificity necessary for the highly precise program needed for manufacturing pharmaceuticals. While some of the interiors appear generic, such as open office or production floors, they represent the specifically calibrated spaces for operation and production. Rudolph’s baroque exuberance comes through most clearly in the curving staircases; one at the guest entrance, and one leading to the pod-like cafeteria that is raised above the roof garden. Turrets, which house the functional systems from seating alcoves and air intake valves are distinctly Rudolphian in the way the building explodes out from its orthodox envelope. Not everyone appreciated Rudolph’s modern design. The complex was clearly visible to motorists on the Meadowbrook Parkway who were not as accepting of Rudolph’s artistic license. The LI Parks Commission responded by planting nine large trees in front of Endo, blocking the view from the Parkway. Visit our Brutal NYC survey at nycurbanism.com to learn more about Endo and see the other brutalist sites in the survey. #brutalism #brutalist_architecture #brutalist #betonbrut #brutalnyc #brutalism #concrete #modernism #modernistarchitecture #paulrudolph #skyline #gardencity #archilovers #architect #architecturalphotography #urbanism (at Garden City, New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/CBECNGgHuYt/?igshid=1ej6x51guz7ju

[nyc-urbanism]

(Part II/II - #FacadeFridays - Metropolitan Correctional Center, part of our #BrutalNYC project) MCC was created to house pre-trial inmates, or occasionally inmates serving short sentences, broken up into self-contained wings. With its close proximity to City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge, the building was designed to mold into its surroundings with no barred windows and minimum barbed wire. The design was heralded for its lack of prison-looking elements including guard towers, barbed wires, chain-linked fences, and large windowless walls, fitting in with the surrounding office buildings. Despite complaints about the heat in the summer, the facility was intended to be air-conditioned so it could use thick unbreakable plastic panels for the windows instead of bars. The exterior is clad in striated precast concrete, with horizontal rows of dark windows, and a caged recreational area on the roof. The $23 million prison sits adjacent to the Municipal Building and One Police Plaza behind Cass Gilbert's 1936 Federal Courthouse in Foley Square, which it is connected to via tunnels. The west wing of the building houses the U.S. Attorney’s Office with the same precast concrete façade, but larger glass windows. The two are connected by a subway electrical sub-station. MCC has housed famous federal inmates over the years including drug lord El Chapo, Jeffrey Epstein, Bernie Madoff, John Gotti, terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There have also been escape attempts over the years, the most publicized being in 1981 when a stolen helicopter unsuccessfully attempted to lift an inmate off the rooftop recreational center. Another attempt, this one successful, involved two inmates lowering themselves down from the second-story with an electrical cord. The men remain missing to this day. (Part of our #BrutalNYC project, documenting #brutalist #architecture in NYC. Visit nycurbanism.com.brutalnyc for more) (at Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/B1zaohaHTDE/?igshid=11xkjs9p5aszt