Portfolio | Paul Rudolph in Sarasota

Sarasota High School and Canopy Walkway, Paul Rudolph, 1960

I took a very very short trip to Sarasota last week to speak to the Sarasota Architectural Foundation about “Modernism for the Masses” — museums, department stores and boutiques that showed Americans how to update their homes, starting in the late 1930s. It was a thrill for me to finally see a little bit of the Sarasota School and especially the early work of Paul Rudolph. In the houses of the early 1950s you can see many of the leitmotifs that would show up, much bigger and in concrete, in his work in the northeast. Canopies, hanging staircases, multiple level changes and overlooks all appear in delicate colors and almost miniature form. Ezra Stoller’s photographs of the Umbrella House make it look monumental, but it is tiny (and I am a short person). The SAF is currently involved in a battle to save the Rudolph canopies at the high school, concrete mushrooms that connected the then-new school to its neo-Gothic predecessor. Rudolph’s Riverview High School was torn down in 2009.

Umbrella House, Paul Rudolph, 1953

Harkavy House, Paul Rudolph, 1957

Revere Quality House, Ralph Twitchell and Paul Rudolph, 1949

Sanderling Beach Club and Cabanas, Paul Rudolph, 1953