New York State Equal Rights Heritage Center

A visitor’s center exploring New York State’s role in the struggle for equal rights is also a gathering space for the local community.

Why was Auburn selected as the home for the center?
Eric Bunge, FAIA, principal-in-charge: Auburn was chosen because of its connections to the struggle for equal rights. Notable Auburnians include Harriet Tubman, who spent the last 50 years of her life there, and William Seward, who was the governor of New York and the Secretary of State to Abraham Lincoln. His house is directly adjacent to our project. There were a lot of progressive ideas flowing through the region—places like Susan B. Anthony’s home and Seneca Falls are very close. Initially, the RFP identified quite a different project: a visitor’s center with a minor exhibition component. However, very quickly the project started to morph into what it is now.

How does your design address this context?
Bunge: We all understood the center should be a springboard to get people out to visit the real sites—it’s a place that connects you to other places. The site is at an interesting edge condition between historic South Street and downtown, which is a newer area. We looked at the historic houses—their proportions, footprints, and details—and tried to create a building that would stick to that context yet look to the future.

Mimi Hoang, AIA, principal: This is the first municipal building that Auburn has built in 40 years. It’s directly in front of city hall, and there used to be a church on the site, so it was always a civic gathering place. During urban renewal, which is such an oxymoronic term, they put a surface parking lot there. We felt a responsibility that it be not just a building, but a social incubator and hub. At the same time we were super fascinated by the history, and the design of the building is about celebrating everything around it.

The sloping roof planes seem to frame views out to the surrounding structures. How did that concept develop?
Bunge: We used the slope of the roof, the connection between the volumes, and the windows themselves to create a unique kind of perspective. The connection points create V-shaped courtyards which are oriented to create very immersive views of, for instance, the Seward House, from within the building. The roof planes themselves contribute to the sense of a cascade of volumes that kind of step up the hill, but also respond to the rooflines in the neighboring buildings without resorting to pastiche.

The building details also seem to deliberately connect with the historic surroundings.
Hoang: A lot of the details are actually traditional ones, but we’re using them in different ways and scales. So, what we call the window shutters—where the brick steps in around the window—that’s a traditional detail, but the windows in our building are very large and contemporary. We’re trying to take these historic details that read as ornamentation and scale them up to respond to an entire façade in a systemic way so that they shift from ornamentation to a much bigger feature of the envelope.

It doesn’t sound like this is a conventional museum. How did the exhibition design develop?
Bunge: We worked together with our partners at MTWTF [a New York–based graphic design studio] and codesigned the exhibition with them. This was a very fast project—we interviewed for it in the spring of 2017, and we opened it in the fall of 2018. The curatorial ambitions happened in parallel. MTWTF came up with a really fundamental concept about the exhibition, which is that it wouldn’t be thematically organized, but that it would be organized by media types. From the very beginning, we all agreed that this should not feel like a museum—it should feel like a constantly evolving center that exposes people to snippets of history—because we want folks to be inspired to leave this building and get on the road and go to visit the attractions that this center highlights. We all sort of organically became the curator, and it was all vetted by an advisory board formed by New York State curators.

Hoang: The building doesn’t have the pressure that museums have in terms of demanding criteria for environmental controls, and lighting, and things like that. Often you’re working within complete white boxes when you’re working in a museum, and in this case we really felt like you know when you are looking at, or listening to, the speeches, you should be sitting with a view of the city of Auburn and putting all these contexts together. We also wanted it to feel urban, so we used the concrete, the terrazzo floor—things that you know will last. This kind of toughness to the interiors is a bit of our M.O. We’re a bit allergic to drywall. We want to use real materials.

How is the building being received by the community?
Bunge: The exhibitions are being received incredibly positively; it’s broken records in terms of visitorship and they expect this to continue to increase in the spring when things thaw out a bit. I think for Auburn this building is becoming their living room, which is exactly how we presented it to them. And we’re excited to see that they’re using the building in ways that no one could’ve anticipated.

Project Credits
Project: New York State Equal Rights Heritage Center, Auburn, N.Y.
Client: City of Auburn; N.Y. State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation
Architect: nArchitects, Brooklyn, N.Y. . Eric Bunge, FAIA (principal-in-charge); Mimi Hoang, AIA (principal); Amanda Morgan, AIA (project manager); Thomas Heltzel, AIA; David Mora
Interior Design: nArchitects
M/E/P Engineer: OLA Consulting Engineers
Structural Engineer: Silman
Civil Engineer/Landscape Architect: Environmental Design and Research
Lighting Designer: Lumen Architecture
Exhibition Design: MTWTF; nArchitects
Graphic Design: MTWTF
Size: 7,500 square feet
Cost: $10 million