North Frontage Road and Park Street, New Haven, CT. On this project, Rudolph used pre-cast cement blocks, similar to those at SMTI / UMass Dartmouth.
“The understanding and help of local and Federal officials for public housing, an exceptional major, and a good site, permitted this most difficult exercise in the economics of building to be fulfilled. The vertical thrust of the piers balanced by the axis of balconies at 90 degree angles to each other gives this building a sense of restrained, dynamic energy. The utilization of a special precast block for all exterior surfaces breaks down the scale of the building, enables it to weather well and helps to keep the building within the stringent economic limits imposed on public housing in the United States.”
Paul Rudolph in Moholy-Nagy, Sibyl. The Architecture of Paul Rudolph. New York: Praeger, 1970. p. 192.
“Those balconies in the Crawford Manor are an alternation of thrusts, one out from the building and one parallel to it, in order to emphasize the essential organization of the building. If all of the balconies thrust forward, then the result from a distant view would be a kind of shaft. But by making the thrusts of the balconies oppose each other, one senses the cubicle nature of the interior.”
Cook, John Wesley. Conversations with Architects : Philip Johnson, Kevin Roche, Paul Rudolph, Bertrand Goldberg, Morris Lapidus, Louis Kahn, Charles Moore, Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown. New York: Praeger, 1973.
