Rudolph On Fire: July 14th, 1969

Saturday, 3:38 AM, July 14, 1969 — the moment that New Haven police were alerted that the Yale Art & Architecture Building was on fire. The blaze was quickly contained, but serious damage —from fire, smoke, and water—extended across several floors of Rudolph’s most iconic building.

When we say that someone’s “on fire”, it usually means something positive— that they’re in a state of great productivity, or they’re achieving their goals, or they’re becoming famous—or sometimes all of those. In that sense, the late 50’s and the 1960’s was certainly a period when Paul Rudolph was “on fire”: important commissions—often large scale, with significant budgets, and in a variety of building types—were coming into the office in abundance, and Rudolph was creating some of his most iconic buildings.

Rudolph was widely published, and seen as the face of a lively and creative American Modernism—and in 1957, at age 39, he was appointed Chair of the school of architecture at Yale (taking office in 1958). Soon after his appointment, he was given the commission to design Yale’s new Art & Architecture Building.

In February, 1964. something occurred which had probably never happened in the history of architectural publishing (and may never happen again): All three major American architectural journals—Architectural Record, Architectural Forum, and Progressive Architecture—had the same building as their cover story: Rudolph’s Yale Art & Architecture Building. John Morris Dixon, an editor at Progressive Architecture at the time, told us that there was no coordination for this—and, given that magazines generally avoid covering the same projects (and would certainly never want to make the same project their “cover story”), it is all-the-more evidence that this building was powerful enough to warrant such across-the-board coverage.

Rudolph’s Yale A&A Building on the cover of the February 1964 issue of ARCHITECTURAL FORUM

Rudolph’s Yale A&A Building on the cover of the February 1964 issue of ARCHITECTURAL RECORD

Rudolph’s Yale A&A Building on the cover of the February 1964 issue of PROGRESSIVE ARCHITECTURE

Reports on the building were nearly ecstatic—and the venerable critic Sibyl Moholy-Nagy—whose Modernist credentials could not be questioned—had an essay in Architectural Forum that can be taken as emblematic of the design’s initial reception. With insight and numerous historical references, she plumbed the building’s formal and spatial roots—and offered some qualifications—but her overall assessment was glorious. Here ae some of her remarks:

Architectural Forum’s February 1964 issue gave extensive coverage to all aspects of the Yale building. Shown here is a page from that issue, with Rudolph’s famous perspective-section drawing, as well as the main floor plan.

“It is gratifying to know that the world of academic honors and medals has so profusely acknowledged the Bauhaus doctrine of architectural education as taught at Harvard since 1937; because never before has a curriculum turned out such a star roster of infidels. Johnson, Lundy, Barnes, Rudolph, Franzen, and others have revered their teacher [Gropius—ed.] while confounding his teaching. They all have left the safe anchorage of functionality, technology and anonymous teamwork to start the long voyage home to architecture as art. A few faithfuls still repeat the old incantations, but the guns by which they struck have stopped firing while those of the apostates are blazing.”

“. . . . [Rudolph’s] latest building. It is a splendid achievement, crystallizing potential solutions for some of the most vexing propositions facing architecture today.”

“The concrete surface has been widely criticized as being arty in an age of technology. However, the visual relief from the beton brut cliché of random formwork in the wake of Le Corbusier's revolution is so pleasing, and the purpose of the building so nontechnological, that the artifice seems wholly justified.”

“Space is an abstraction that must be conceived for its specific purpose. Every user is a judge. It is from their total involvement in this dichotomy of idea and realization that the architectural students will learn the essence of their profession. The Yale school is Paul Rudolph's confessional proof that architecture is not a commodity but an infinite potential of art, and therefore free and imperishable.”

“Earthrise”—probably the most famous photograph to come out of the US space program. The photo was taken in 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission—the first time a manned ship had gone to the moon-and-back.

GOOD TIMES, AND…

After 6 years as chair, during which he revolutionized architectural education at Yale, Rudolph left in 1964—relocating his home and office in New York City (where he’d reside for the rest of his life). The later 60’s continued to be a good period for him, and in a previous article we surveyed how a representative year—1968—was both a time of cultural and political churning in the country, and a creatively rich time for Rudolph.

Things were going well in the US economy, and technology and culture [including architecture] were advancing in multiple directions—but that cultural & political “churning” (referred-to above) also involved protests of increasing number and intensity: of the war in Vietnam, the lack of rights for Women and minorities, the devastation of the environment, and of inequalities in wealth and community resources.

The Yale’s Art & Architecture Building’s main atrium drafting room, after the 1969 fire. The space’s signature statue of Minerva, though streaked by smoke, was undamaged.

…FIERY TIMES

Moreover, the very consumer/conformist culture which was so celebrated in mainstream media—and the values on which it was founded—were being questioned by a younger (and increasingly activist) generation. This led to campuses ablaze with protest.

The 1960’s—with all its growing openness and freedoms, as well as its clashing bitterness—is the subject of numerous historical-cultural studies, and has been dramatized in literature. For our purposes, we just want to note that it is within this heated atmosphere that Rudolph’s Yale Art & Architecture Building caught fire.

[RETROSPECTA 40 (the 2016-2017 issue), published by the Yale School of Architecture, has a section on the campus cultural context within which the fire occurred—as does Robert A. M. Stern and Jimmy Stamp’s history of a century of architectural education at Yale, “Pedagogy and Place” (which also covers the fire’s aftermath).]

Paul Rudolph, in the uniform of an officer in the US Navy during World War II. He was stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and engaged in the repair of damaged ships.

DID RUDOLPH CAUSE THE YALE A&A FIRE?

Rudolph left Yale in 1964, and his stated reason was to deal with his expanding professional practice—and, given the number and complexity of the commissions he was receiving, one can see that as a legitimate reason. Yet there may be an additional cause—emerging from Rudolph himself.

The sensitive and reticent country fellow, who went into the Navy during World War II, emerged as an experienced 0fficer who had commanded hundreds, working in a navy yard on the repair of damaged warships. Rudolph retained that mood and mode of command for the rest of his career. Even his look changed: gone was his pre-war bouffant, replaced by a severe flat-top cut that he wore for another half-century. While he was capable of showing warmth and generosity, he was known to students, faculty, and employees as a leader who was assertive and demanding. This brought forth superb achievements from students and staff—and often evoked life-long appreciation and loyalty to Rudolph—but, as the 60’s got going, the culture was changing: anything that had an authoritarian feel was ripe for questioning and push-back. Perhaps Rudolph began to feel this—and wanted none of it. So 1964 was the right time for him to depart.

Moreover, Rudolph’s own building—his great legacy to Yale—conveyed that same feeling of forcefulness. By the later 60’s, it too was being questioned—both functionally and conceptually—with its almost aggressive use of materials and “overdetermined” spaces were being undermined by the way it was used (and, some say, abused) during the chairmanship of Charles Moore, Rudolph’s successor as chair.

So if there was on-campus anger in the air (directed at a menu of legitimate grievances), there was also anger at the building—or rather, what it represented: power and authority, and the society (the campus and beyond) in which that was solidified and wielded.

Rudolph may have been gone, but his building felt like a tangible manifestation of what was wrong with the world.

The photographer of this scene, taken within Yale’s Art and Architecture Building in 2008, labeled it as having “crowded desks” and “littered with food, models, draft designs, and instruments of architectural design”. The studios in 1969—also a time of widespread smoking—were even denser with combustible materials.

WHAT REALLY CAUSED THE YALE A&A FIRE?

Many causes were advanced for the fire. Several that have been put forth are:

• The boiling, angry atmosphere, in that era of campus protest, was the context for student acts of violence and possibly arson.

• The above—a period of profoundly “anti-establishment” (anti-authoritarian) protest—combined with the almost aggressively powerful character of Rudolph’s design, made the building itself an attractive target for a protesting act of destruction.

• The building was permeable, and known to be subject to occasional petty theft, so local “kids”—delinquent teenagers—have been alleged to have started the fire.

• The studios were allowed—during Moore’s chairmanship—to become “favelas”: divided up by makeshift partitions of highly combustible materials—an environment of tinder, and in an era when smoking by students and faculty was still prevasive.

• The materials used by students—-paper, cardboard, glue, brushed and sprayed paint, wood, rubber cement…—are highly flammable. Moreover, as anyone who has ever visited an architecture school studio will report, these environments often become anarchic with scraps and debris on every surface.

Investigations of the fire were conducted, but never identified a distinct culprit. The local fire marshal said the cause was “undetermined” and possibly accidental, and cited the mass and density of combustible materials—but the local fire chief publicly said it was “of suspicious origin".

The Yale Art & Architecture Building did eventually receive a thorough renovation (and upgrading of systems), and was rededicated as Rudolph Hall in 2008.

REBIRTH OF THE PHOENIX

When Rudolph was asked about his reaction to the fire, he said:

“I felt as if somebody had died.”

Others reflected on the fire as symbol and message. A student said:

“. . . .the building burst into flames out if its own psychic guilt. It was the only solution.”

Peter Blake—an architect, journalist, and architectural magazine editor (and friend of Rudolph) wrote:

“The Yale fire did dramatize a state of concern. . . .a profound uneasiness among students (and some faculty) about the priorities that today govern American architecture and American architectural education”

In the fall of 1988, Yale students created an exhibit about the building—one to which Rudolph gave his full cooperation (including lending drawings.) The catalog had essays by Alan Plattus, George Ranailli, and Thomas L. Schumacher—each expressing their insights about (and appreciation of) the building—but the contribution by the late Michael Sorkin, “Auto da Fe”, meditated on the fire, and ends by evoking the mythical and immortal phoenix bird that regenerates out of fire:

“Too soon, but not too late for the Phoenix. The ruin waits to blaze again.”

The fire left the building was unusable, and the school had to move-out while repairs were done—not returning until 1971. Even without the fire, Rudolph had not been happy with way the building had been left subject to poor maintenance, and allowed to fall into disrepair. This was compounded by the way the subsequent administration (Moore’s) seemed to encourage a disrespect for the building and the values—Rudolph’s values—it represented. It was many years before Rudolph would even visit the building.

The building continued to decline, and Yale even considered demolition. Fortunately, it eventually received a complete and respectful interior & exterior renovation, undertaken with the support of Sid R. Bass (for whom Rudolph had designed an elegant residence, as well as other projects)—and in 2008 it was rededicated as

RUDOLPH HALL

Another view, taken after the 1969 fire, showing internal damage to the Art & Architecture Building. When Rudolph later remarked about his reaction to the fire: “I felt as if somebody had died.”

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IMAGE CREDITS

NOTES:

The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation gratefully thanks all the individuals and organizations whose images are used in this non-profit scholarly and educational project.

The credits are shown when known to us, and are to the best of our knowledge, but the origin and connected rights of many images (especially vintage photos and other vintage materials) are often difficult determine. In all cases the materials are used in-good faith, and in fair use, in our non-profit, scholarly, and educational efforts. If any use, credits, or rights need to be amended or changed, please let us know.

When/If Wikimedia Commons links are provided, they are linked to the information page for that particular image. Information about the rights for the use of each of those images, as well as technical information on the images, can be found on those individual pages.

CREDITS:

Yale Art & Architecture Building, during the 1969 fire: courtesy of Yale University; Photo of earth from space: photograph by US astronaut William Anders; Covers of the February, 1964 issues of Architectural Forum, Architectural Record, and Progressive Architecture, courtesy of USModernist Library; Yale Art & Architecture section and plan: page from Architectural Forum, courtesy of USModernist Library; Interior views of the Yale Art & Architecture Building, showing fire damage: courtesy of Yale University; Rudolph in US Navy officer’s uniform: © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Renovated Yale Art & Architecture Building (Rudolph Hall): photo by Sage Ross, via Wikimedia Commons; Studio interior, within the Rudolph Hall (the Yale school of architecture building): photo by Ragesoss, via Wikimedia Commons

Architecture as a "Labor of Love" (or just labor?)

This mug, with clever graphics designed by Spaghettee, is titled “The Evolution Of Man - Architect”—and while the designer’s meaning is clear (about the culmination of evolution), perhaps another interpretation can be….

that it’s also asking a serious question: “Is this the outcome to which all existence leads: architectural labor?”

The life of an architect is associated with long hours (and often no full weekends, and putting-off vacations—and, if they’re taken at all, they’re shortened). Working long days into late nights seems frequent in architectural offices—an aspect of professional culture that goes beyond showing one’s enthusiasm or commitment—and which can manifest in health challenges and life-imbalance.

LONG HOURS AND THE CULTURE OF THE “CHARETTE”

Late at night at the Yale Art & Architecture Building—and the lights are still burning. This view is from 1963, which is during the period (1958-1965) when Paul Rudolph was chair of Yale’s School of Architecture. He, along with the students (working at their drawing boards) might well have been in the building when this photograph was taken.

Among architecture students, there’s a saying:

You can always tell which building on campus is the Architecture School: it’s the only one where the lights are on all night.

The practice of endless hours, logged by architects, certainly seems to start in architecture school: most students remember working through the weekend and holidays, and the nights that stretch into mornings.

This is not a new phenomenon, and such behavior was known in 19th century: it is associated with the French art and architecture school, the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The practice has the testimony of language in the term “charrette” (a French word meaning cart or wagon.) At the end of an school assignment, a cart was sent around to the architecture school studios to collect the student’s work. Allegedly, students would jump onto the cart—even as it was wheeled away—to keep working on their designs until the last moment (when the work was finally delivered for use by the jury.) Out of this came phrases for drastic stretches of work to meet a deadline: one is said to be “working en charrette” or “doing a charrette.”

Tigerman’s memoir includes his reflections on Rudolph—as teacher, architect, and man—and describes the long hours that were expected of architecture school students.

Late in his life, Stanley Tigerman (1930-2019) released a pulls-no-punches memoir, Designing Bridges to Burn. The book is frank about Tigerman’s career, life, and the figures he encountered—-and that includes writing about his years as a student at Yale’s School of Architecture. [He was there in the middle of the era when Paul Rudolph was chair of the department, and he graduated in 1961.]

In Tigerman’s memoir, he tells of the time that he was, simultaneously, both a full-time student and also a part-time employee at Paul Rudolph’s combined office & residence on High Street (which was located not far from the school.) The book’s passages, below, are revealing for what they say about the time & labor commitment Rudolph expected of students, as well as about Rudolph’s own work ethic:

Not far from the Yale’s architecture school (where Paul Rudolph was chair of the department) was Rudolph’s architecture office on High Street: one large, loft-like space, situated in the top of a vintage building owned by the architect (to which Rudolph also added his residence.) Here, Tigerman had a part-time job working for Rudolph—as did some other Yale students. The commitment expected of students (shown in long hours, working day and night) was modeled for them by Paul Rudolph’s own work ethic.

“In those years, the architecture studio terminated its daily activities promptly at 2 am when the Yale radio station blared out the Yale anthem “Bright College Years.” Every night in an unanticipated explosion of collegiality, we all rose from our drafting-board stools to belt out Yale’s alma mater. Many of our group then reconvened at My Brother’s Place, the local architecture school hangout on Chapel Street across from the art school at Street Hall. I instead went to work at Rudolph’s atelier around the corner on High Street”

“Working in Rudolph’s office was an eye-opener. For those of us who thought that we had a strong commitment to architecture, what we engaged in was child’s play next to Rudolph’s personal work ethic. He toiled tirelessly night and day, intermittently striding the one short block from the studio to the architecture school whenever the spirit moved him. One never knew when he would show up. . . . but God forbid if one’s drafting board was unmanned when he arrived.”

“Working in Rudolph’s studio was a race against time for the rest of us as well. I thrive on it, but there was a price to pay. I was frequently in a state of sleep deprivation and looked it. No matter, I was at my drawing board in the architecture-school studio every morning when it reopened at 9 am, as were all of us.”

WORK-LIFE BALANCE?

Of course, such behavior doesn’t end with graduation from school. In the last couple of decades, the issue of “work-life balance” has become a rising subject of debate—including within the architectural profession. Sometimes that imbalance is self-imposed—and in a beautiful memorial tribute to his old teacher, employer, and friend, Tigerman assessed this aspect of Rudolph: “His personal tragedy lay in his expectations that architecture would offer him that which only life can deliver.”

The problems of architectural work are not limited to long hours (though that’s one of the most high-profile symptoms)—and some researchers and thinkers have been looking into the nature of architectural “labor.”

WAGNER AND DEAMER ON THE CULTURE OF ARCHITECTURE

We’re always interested in what Kate Wagner has to say. It would be too limited to call her an architecture critic, as that would seem to restrict her judgement to buildings (though she certainly addresses architectural design.) Kate Wagner is also one of the most astute observers of architectural culture: the overall systems, contexts, relationships, and assumptions from which our built environment emerges.

In several past posts we’ve pointed to articles Wagner has written—and reflected on and the issues she raised. These have ranged from the hegemony of open space planning (and the challenges it entails) -to- Brutalism (and its larger meanings)—a topic which she’s taken on again and again.

In an article in The Architect’s Newspaper, titled “People Power”, Kate Wagner reviewed Peggy Deamer’s recent book, ARCHITECTURE AND LABOR. Wagner not only reports on the book, but also contributes her own perceptions and insights.

ARCHITECTS’ WORK: REWARDING (BUT UN-REWARDED?)

A view of the architectural drafting room of Ferry & Clas—probably from the late 19th Century.

The book author, Peggy Deamer, is an architect and professor emerita of architecture at Yale—and the founding member of The Architecture Lobby, which describes itself as:

“. . . .an organization of architectural workers advocating for the value of architecture in the general public and for architectural work within the discipline. It believes that the work architects do – aesthetic, technical, social, organizational, environmental, administrative, fiduciary – needs structural change to be more rewarding and more socially relevant. As long as architecture tolerates abusive practices in the office and the construction site, it cannot insist on its role in and for the public good.”

And, it that spirit, Deamer has written ARCHITECTURE AND LABOR. In the introduction, she states her position and intentions for the book:

The new book by Peggy Deamer uses a provocative image: note the sign carried by the demonstrator in the cover photo..

“This book hopes to fill a huge and consequential gap in architectural thought and practice: the acknowledgment of the fact that architects labor—that our time in the office is work, that this work is monetized, and that monetization is part of our larger, national, economic equation. We might think that our design activity is art and not work; we might assume that we offer our spatial gifts to society from some exceptional position outside society itself; we might hope that our value to society transcends commerce—but no. We are part of the labor force. . . .”

And:

“. . -. .The fact that architects themselves are startled by the term "architectural labor" indicates how late, compared to professions like art, film, journalism, couture, and literature, we are to a substantive discussion of labor and its value. This book is not a how-to guide to creating robust professional practices. It is rather an examination of our befuddled concept of "architectural work" and that befuddlement's negative consequences on our various institutions.”

THE REALITIES OF ARCHITECTURAL WORK

Kate Wagner, in her review-essay on the book (and the issues it raises), gives her view of the actuality of the day-to-day work of architecture:

“Most of the practicing architecture is drudgery. . . .Most of the time, they’re sitting at the computer wrangling something called Building Information Management or drawing sections of insulation at a desk with several other people doing the same thing. This is not the creative calling one was promised as a 19-year-old. This is work, plain and simple. . . .”

And then points-out the disjunction between that reality, and how architects (and their staffs) view themselves and their position:

“And yet architects do not see themselves as workers. They see themselves as temporarily disadvantaged creatives, somehow distinct from the construction laborers who turn their drawings into reality. When architects do begin to think of themselves as workers, they open themselves up to a wide range of political possibilities, ones with profound potential to change the practice and face of architecture. . . .”

“We as a field are thus fortunate that there are now works like Peggy Deamer’s Architecture and Labor that help clarify, in no uncertain terms, our unflattering rules of engagement as participants in capitalist society. . . .”

“Much of Deamer’s work could be characterized as disciplinary myth-busting. . . .with a disquisition on the nature of architectural labor as labor, aiming to tear down the firewall between architects and the rest of the AEC world, or as Deamer succinctly puts it, “Architects design, contractors build; we do art, they do work.”

She (and the book) also point out:

“In distinguishing themselves from the building trades, architects not only fail to grasp the notion of their own precarity as laborers but also let slip the financial and wellness opportunities available to those trades through unions and different structures of ownership.”

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK—AND A CALL TO ACTION

Kate Wagner concludes with high assessment of Deamer’s book, Architecture and Labor—and an incitement to ask questions:

“Deamer does a wonderful job of answering questions related to the eldritch legal and organizational setbacks tied to the specific field of architecture. She asks and answers questions of labor—what it means in terms of architectural practice, how architects’ conceptions of themselves form over time, the history of architectural labor and its organizing bodies—but the time now has come to ask questions about labor power. Those are collective questions, and the only way to truly answer them is through action.”

An architect at his drawing board: an engraving published in 1893, illustrating an article about a new model of upright drawing board. With its counter-weighted parallel bar (replacing the traditional T-Square), built-in drafting tools ledge, and movable electric light, this would have been high-tech for it’s era. While this might be seen as improved equipment for the architect, the kind of analysis which Wagner an Deamer offer could lead one to characterize this as a way to increase labor productivity. Note that work would have been done standing-up, a practice more often found in European architecture and engineering offices.

BOOK INFORMATION AND AVAILABLITY:

Title:  Architecture and Labor

Author:  Peggy Deamer

Publisher:  Routledge

Format:  Paperback, 9” x 6”, 192 pages,

Illustrations: 65 black & white illustrations

ISBN:  9780367343507

Alternative Formats:  both hardcover and eBook versions are also available.

Publisher’s page for the book:  here

Amazon page for the book:  here

Barnes & Noble page for the book:  here

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IMAGE CREDITS

NOTES:

The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation gratefully thanks all the individuals and organizations whose images are used in this non-profit scholarly and educational project.

The credits are shown when known to us, and are to the best of our knowledge, but the origin and connected rights of many images (especially vintage photos and other vintage materials) are often difficult determine. In all cases the materials are used in-good faith, and in fair use, in our non-profit, scholarly, and educational efforts. If any use, credits, or rights need to be amended or changed, please let us know.

When/If Wikimedia Commons links are provided, they are linked to the information page for that particular image. Information about the rights for the use of each of those images, as well as technical information on the images, can be found on those individual pages.

CREDITS, FROM TOP-TO-BOTTOM:

“The Evolution Of Man - Architect” Mug : from the Amazon page for that item; Yale Art & Architecture Building at night: courtesy of © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10); “Designing Bridges To Burn” book cover: from the Amazon page for that book; Interior of Paul Rudolph’s architecture office on High Street in New Haven: photo by Yuji Noga, from the archives of the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation; Ferry & Clas drafting room: via Wikimedia Commons; “Architecture and Labor” book cover: by the the publisher, Routledge; Engraved drawing of of a hand on a drawing board, with a ruling pen: from A Textbook on Ornamental Design (1901), via Wikimedia Commons; Architect standing at Drawing Board: a wood engraving published on May 25, 1893 in Teknisk Ukeblad, an engineering journal in Norway. It illustrates an article about a new kind of upright drawing board delivered by the firm J. M. Voith in Heidenheim a. d. Brenz (in south Germany), via Wikimedia Commons.