Architecture critic Michael Kimmelman urged legislators weighing the demolition of the Paul Rudolph-designed Orange County Government Center in Goshen, N.Y., to reconsider the building’s fate in an article for the New York Times on Tuesday. A proposal from Gene Kaufman of New York-based Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman Architects to buy the structure and transform it into an arts hub was vetoed by Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus in January, but Orange County officials were scheduled to meet today, pending a winter storm in the northeast, to discuss overruling Neuhaus’s veto.
“They can do the right thing Thursday,” Kimmelman wrote. “They can overturn the veto and reconsider demolition.”
Architectural photographer Matthew Carbone shot the Rudolph building last week in case legislators decide against retaining—and ultimately restoring—the Orange County Government Center, which was completed in 1967. “The writing is on the wall,” Carbone wrote on his blog. “Unless something drastic happens in the next few days, the Paul Rudolph-designed Government Center is coming down.”
