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Back in the 1950s, when architect Paul Rudolph was churning out masterpieces of what came to be known later as the Sarasota School of Architecture, visitors arrived from all over the world to see the design genius who was attracting so much attention in the architectural press. Almost invariably, once inside the cramped, cluttered 12-by 24-foot space on Main Street, close by a blueprinter's office and Jack's Barbershop, they would turn to say to one of Rudolph's young assistants in puzzlement: "But we wanted the main office." "This is the main office," the assistant would reply, with a mix of amusement and weariness.
Once over their shock, the Sarasota guests might take a tour of Rudolph buildings completed or in the making, or spend some time one-on-one with the short, intense, high-energy guy with the bristly crewcut and the horn-rimmed glasses who seemed perpetually hunched over his drawing board. It was a time of great excitement in Sarasota architecture, with a number of aspiring talents creating buildings springing from a modernist ethic and combining new materials and approaches for a new style of Florida living. But of all the young architects of that period, only Rudolph, who went on to head Yales architecture department and to design that university's Art and Architecture building as well as spectacular megastructures across Southeast Asia before his death in 1997, had an influence, both as an architect and a teacher, that has been sustained and far-reaching.
Paul Marvin Rudolph was born Oct. 23, 1918, in Elkton, Ky., the son of a Methodist minister of some standing in his ecclesiastical world. According to Ernst Wagner, Rudolph's close friend for the last 20 years of his life, Rudolph was about seven when his father had occasion to commission an architect to build a new church.
"Paul saw how the process worked," says Wagner. "And he knew immediately what he wanted to be. His focus only became stronger through the years."
His choice of a profession was apparently not one his father approved of. Perhaps he had hopes that his son would follow him into the ministry, or perhaps he was simply concerned about the odds of making a living as an architect. But Paul, who seems to have inherited much...