Rudolph’s Riverview High School in Sarasota, Fla. Built in 1958. (Photos by C-M.)
Sad news: The Sarasota, Fla. school board voted to demolish Paul Rudolph’s historic Riverview High School to make way for parking and ballfields, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports today. The decision was made largely because of a lack of funds needed to update the buildings to other uses. This ends a two year effort by preservationists to save the historic, Modernist high school. (See a view of the school in 1958 here.)
This is unfortunate for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that as Rudolph’s smaller structures are razed, it leaves us with ever fewer examples of the architect’s graceful early works, which, in my mind, are far more intriguing than his later buildings, which are all about concrete-heavy brutalism.
After the jump, more pix of RHS I snapped when I trespassed all over Sarasota last summer to check out the city’s trove of Modernist buildings.
Crazy! I graduated from there, always loved the campus. But it doesn’t surprise me, anything in Sarasota with even a bit of historical relevance gets flattened for new hotels, retirement homes, resturant’s, big box stores, etc.. It’s really sad.
Rudolph’s stuff always seems to be initially repulsive. I went to school at Umass: Dartmouth, where he designed most of the original campus. During the first two years you tended to agree with everyone that it was depressing, that the stairs were too short, that it was creepy. But the least two years you started to appreciate those short, halting steps, the shaded, overhanging concrete eaves…
the plan for adaptive re-use of Riverview High School has life in it yet! See article:
METROPOLIS MAGAZINE
URBAN JOURNAL
Preservation or Parking?
There may yet be hope for Paul Rudolph’s modern masterpiece despite a recent vote against it.
http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=3437
Really Sad,History doesn’t seem to matter to Developers as long as cash is involved
Amazing story… this was an interesting line to me:
“The decision was made largely because of a lack of funds needed to update the buildings to other uses.”
Really? The U.S. government seems to pride itself on how much money it has doled out for the last 40 years or so to schools and education, or so I read (I’m only in high school). Did the Riverview school not get any money? It has to be demolished because of no money? Sickening. Such is the way of the world these days I guess. Then again, I wish my high school would be torn down - I hate it and want to go to a different school.
I agree it is definitely sad to see my school go but if only you alumni knew the condition it was in. Maintenance has blown out the window with the construction of the new school. There were green plants growing from pipes, rusted piping and rails, not to mention the locker rooms and bathrooms. I was surprised the spray paint was painted over on the last week of this school year. It is of course a shame to see such good architecture become a block-o-concrete school with completely internal hallways. I agree that some drastic repairs needed to made but they just don’t have the funding.