New York/Princeton

Historical Studies/Social Science Library • Wallace Harrison (digital)

While photographing a new building at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, I walked around the campus at lunch time, and took snapshots of two architectural gems, one by Robert Geddes (see earlier post and the other by Wallace K. Harrison.

Historical Studies/Social Science Library (digital)


Historical Studies/Social Science Library (digital)

The two groupings of buildings are directly adjacent to each other--the Harrison designed Historical Studies/Social Science Library was completed in 1964, and the Geddes complex a few years later. But stylistically, they are further apart. Both the brutalism of Geddes and the lighter/whiter neo-classicim of Harrison (and other architects like Phillip Johnson and Edward Durell Stone) were reactions to the dominate Miesian school of architecture.


Historical Studies/Social Science Library (digital)

One rarely finds the two styles side by side as they would seem to be incompatible. Here in Princeton, however, there is an architectural dialog between the two schools of thought, brought together in part by the integration of landscape and architecture.

See the post below for the Geddes buildings.