Brutalism in New York

New York's relationship with brutalism runs through its institutions more than its housing. Universities, museums, and government agencies commissioned heavy concrete buildings across the state in the 1960s and 70s, often from the leading American modernists of the day. Marcel Breuer gave the city its most famous example with the granite-clad inverted ziggurat built for the Whitney Museum, and his Begrisch Hall at Bronx Community College cantilevers dramatically over its campus plaza. I. M. Pei contributed refined concrete work from Kips Bay to upstate commissions like the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell.

Beyond the five boroughs, the state capital's Empire State Plaza produced The Egg, one of the most recognizable performance venues in the country, while Louis Kahn and Paul Rudolph left major buildings in Rochester and across the region. Civic structures like the Murry Bergtraum High School show how the style filtered into everyday public architecture.