I'm a fan of Rudolph's work, particularly the stuff that leans toward the International Style, and while this building tiptoes up to the edges of Brutalism -- a style I generally dislike -- it stops just short, with beautiful effect. I hope the county does the right thing.
UPDATE: The county did not do the right thing. Democratic legislators failed in two attempts to derail the virtual demolition of the building yesterday, and the body did not vote on whether to override an earlier veto of an alternative plan by the county executive. It's unclear (based on my quick review of press reports) whether this is the absolute final word on the issue.
I don't know enough about politics in Orange County, NY to speculate as to why this issue seems to have split roughly along Democrat/Republican party lines, and I'm not going to air my (probably biased) suspicions in this public forum. I will say that my own experience with local government is consistent with the notion that, once a developer gets a plan in the government pipeline, it's almost impossible to derail that plan, even in the face of organized opposition and strong arguments against it. It's not (usually) a matter of partisan politics; it's a matter of money. And that's the core problem with our politics in this country more generally, IMHO. (See what I just did -- I tied in this seemingly frivolous dispute about architecture to the main subjects of this blog! Everything's connected.)
Anyway, more on both the architectural issue and the underlying crisis in our democratic process in subsequent posts.
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