I will not, unfortunately, get to see the Brutal Destruction exhibit in Boston. One of the buildings featured is the Orange County Government Center, which I saw shortly before it was altered beyond recognition. The short article at my first link contains the sentence “Similar to Brutalism, historicist and classical styles such as the Victorian or Second Empire faced similar rhetorical and public attacks and were cast as outmoded and outdated forms.” That sentence is factually correct but may be misleading in an interesting way. A question that we can ask, not with regard to historic preservation but rather with regard to why Brutalism has few defenders, is this: was the style ever widely loved?
When the Victorian and second empire styles were new, they were modern. Mansard roofs, the hallmark of second empire, were the height of modern architecture in the mid-1800s. You can easily find contemporary descriptions praising buildings in that style for their beauty and utility; the fact that so many were built suggests that the good impression was widespread. There are similar glowing reviews of the brownstone and brick rowhouses that were constructed by the thousand in the second half of the nineteenth century. One of my favorite descriptions referred to the identical houses creating “a pleasing monotony” in the streetscape.
Times and tastes change. By the 1910s, people were doing anything and everything to make the rowhouses less monotonous and less Victorian. In their zeal to modernize the old houses, they made a lot of changes which are now seen as mistakes; many of our projects have involved undoing 1920s and 30s alterations to rowhouses. But the fact that I’d emphasize is that not only are these buildings loved (by many) now, when they are seen as historical, they were loved (by many) when they were new. They went through a period on the outs, but that is inevitable with taste.
The problem that has to be addressed in preserving Brutalist buildings is that very few of them were loved when they were new. The style is an acquired taste for most people and few acquired it. Brutalism isn’t the only modernist style with this problem. The somewhat amorphous “Mid-Century Modern” was also received with reactions ranging from luke-warm to cold when it was new, which is why the defense of buildings like 2 Columbus Circle has been weak. A style that was popular when it was new and unpopular now can be defended on the grounds of the philosophy of historic preservation; a style that was unpopular when new and popular now needs little defense. But a style that was unpopular when new and unpopular now is in trouble.
(The picture above is Mori’s Restaurant in 1935, with a facade designed by Raymond Hood hiding two old rowhouses on Bleecker Street.)
You must be logged in to post a comment.