New Haven Brutalist Architecture to Visit Before Watching ‘The Brutalist’
STARK GEOMETRIC STRUCTURES ARE ALL ACROSS THE CITY, WHETHER YOU KNOW IT OR NOT
The new epic movie The Brutalist follows an architect of the movie’s namesake style who immigrates to the United States after surviving the Holocaust.
While the themes of the The Brutalist only lightly swirl around the architecture style, they still play a part. Brutalist architecture emerged during the 1950s, when the movie is set, as a post World War II response to rebuilding countries around the world. While some see the architectural movement as a way designers explored new waves of innovation and reconstruction, many find brutalism as a grounding, practical medium. Unlike fanciful Victorian or Gothic architectural styles, brutalism has stark exteriors and sharp geometric shapes. It’s heavy, it’s concrete, it’s not very comfy. The movie’s production designer used these styles to show the architect’s emotional depth and story.
If you live in New Haven, you are not new to brutalist architecture, or passed by it unknowingly. You can see it on the highway passing by the city, or walking around downtown. Although many people in the city revere this type of architecture, which silhouettes harshly against the greenery and people around the city, it ultimately does not function very well. Brutalism is designed primarily for aesthetics, and prides itself on its macho muscular structure rather than a functional space.
Regardless of how you interpret brutalism in the movie, in architectural history, or in New Haven, here are a few brutalist structures to visit on your way to seeing Adrien Brody’s Oscar-bait performance:
HOTEL MARCEL
You’ve probably seen this building if you’re driving down I-95, visited Ikea, or been on Reddit’s r/evilbuildings. The concrete building was designed for the Armstrong Rubber Company by Marcel Breuer and Robert F. Gatje. Breuer placed a stark gap between the offices and development floors, a design feature that you can see in his other seminal work like the oddly-placed gaps in his Wassily Chair.
RUDOLPH HALL
The Yale Architecture building is one of the earliest brutalist structures in the US. The architect Paul Rudolph was widely praised for his work, but only aesthetically. Once the building actually started being used, his fame greatly fell. In 1969, a fire almost destroyed the whole building. Little light gets into the building now, and it is sharply tucked away from the city. A lot of people recognize his architecture is not ideal: in “The Royal Tenenbaums,” Ben Stiller runs a fire drill for his kids in their apartment, which is Rudolph’s Beekman Place apartment.
Temple Street Parking Garage
Another Rudolph design, this parking garage overtakes all of the buildings underneath it. As Rudolph explained, “I wanted to make a building which said it dealt with cars and movement. I wanted there to be no doubt that this is a parking garage.” And yet, there is no doubt that these businesses wish they got a little more light. One night at Otaru in New Haven, someone broke into a car above the sushi place, and glass went all over the front sidewalk.
Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ
Before its building, the congregation joined at 100 Dixwell Ave, and were an integral stop on the Underground Railroad and protested the imprisonment of La Amistad Africans in New Haven. In the 1950s, the city took on an “urban renewal project,” and this church building was a part of the plan and would be designed by John M. Johansen. Although an adjunct professor at Yale, the Harvard 5 architect was designing most of his buildings in the Gold Coast of Connecticut, most specifically New Canaan. But Johansen refused to go back to New Canaan, as John M. Johansen blamed the demolition of his houses on the local real estate developers - of the seven houses he designed in the area, three were demolished.
KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS MUSEUM
This concrete building swims in even more concrete parking. Originally designed in 1965 as a Community Services Buliding, it ended up hosting many different organizations, like a pickle factory and a coffee roasting shop. The site itself has biblical origins, tied to New Haven’s Puritan “nine square city by the sea,” but ironically none of the squares touched the sea. The museum, which sits open that grid, opened in 2001.
