Brutalism lost the good fight in 2015. One of its most important icons, the Orange County Government Center in Goshen, New York, fell to the wrecking ball this year. Paul Rudolph’s many-eyed monster should still be standing today.
The odds were never so stacked against it as its detractors might think. The Government Center has been on the chopping block since 2011, when it was damaged by Hurricane Irene following decades of neglect. Its supporters rallied this year, when Gene Kaufman, a prominent New York architect, offered to buy and restore the building to turn it into an artists’ residency and exhibit space. Kaufman even offered to design a new government building next door—for millions less than what Orange County was looking to pay. “A no-brainer,” as Michael Kimmelman put it in The New York Times.
