Paul Rudolph
Thank You For Soaking

God willing, at this very moment someone is scrambling eggs on a stove in an apartment overlooking the East River while at the same time gazing up at someone’s buttocks, pressed against a see-through Plexiglas bathtub, sunken, by design, into the floor above.
In the early 1980s, the late Paul Rudolph, noted architect and onetime dean of the Yale School of Architecture, incorporated such a tub into his dream apartment on the top three floors of 23 Beekman Place. The tub was still in working condition a few years ago, when hotelier and noted bathing enthusiast André Balazs had his birthday party there. “Of all the incredible bathtubs I’ve heard of in this city, that one takes it,” Mr. Balazs said. read more »
The Afternoon Wrap: Thursday
- Legendary apartments are born when minimalist Manhattan design joins forces with extravagant hip-hop superstardom. [See photo above for proof.] [Dezeen, via Curbed]
- One of Paul Rudolph's modernist houses--a 4,200-square-foot beauty in Westport, Connecticut--has "ended up in a landfill." Despite its subtlety-meets-Brutalist 1972 design, the house was demolished earlier this month. [Architectural Record]
- Blog Mystery of the Week: Is the Brooklyn Heights' Dahn Yoga HQ a murderous cult? [Brooklyn Record]
- Local Building-Industry Fact of the Week: The construction biz grosses $60.8 billion every year, and has created 275,000 jobs. [Crain's]
- If you're the kind of renter often described as "a real jerk... shaky, sort of nervous and a complete phony who smiled too much for his own good," arguing with landlords and brokers won't get you far. [NY Press] -Max Abelson








