Newsletter #187 - Béton Brut

This might just be a phase.

It all started at the Sullivan County Government Center, where I was renewing my license at the DMV.

I had never been to this DMV location before. I was expecting a brutally long wait. I was not expecting brutalist architecture.

I had to know more. Who was the architect? When was it built? Was this person famous?

I called the Buildings Department and Public Works to inquire about it and spoke to someone who told me the building was designed by Milton D. Petrides & Associates and was constructed in 1974-75.

I did a little research on Milton D. Petrides, but I couldn't really find all that much about him. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Architecture in 1951 and founded Milton D. Petrides & Associates on Long Island in 1957. He was president of the Long Island Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and later became president of the entire State of New York AIA chapter.

Despite these credentials, there's virtually no trace online of any other buildings he designed.

My investigation went cold. I realized I couldn’t write a whole newsletter about it.

I was lamenting about this on Instagram, until someone told me that there was another brutalist building in the county: Sullivan County Community College. So I went to visit the campus, which is in Loch Sheldrake, NY.

This is Statler Hall. The building was designed by the architectural firm Edward Durell Stone & Associates. Even if you have never heard of this firm, you are probably familiar with their work, because they have designed a number of famous buildings: Radio City Music Hall, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, just to name a few.

What a cool building. How did I not even know this existed in my own county?!

I made some photos, but I don’t really love them. That’s why I processed them in black and white. When photographs aren’t really working, that’s how you make them better.

I plan to return to photograph it in my preferred light.

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In the meantime, I searched my archive for other brutalist buildings I have encountered over the course of my career. Flipping through hundreds of photographs, I came across a few of the Salk Institute, which I photographed on April 21, 2008, for Seed Magazine. The story was about science labs at night, so the architecture of the locations I visited wasn't really the point of the assignment.

But the Salk Institute was different. The building, designed by Louis Kahn and completed in 1965, is considered one of the masterpieces of brutalist architecture. What makes it extraordinary isn't just the raw concrete, it's how Kahn used that material to create something almost spiritual.

The institute sits on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and Kahn designed these two parallel concrete structures that frame a perfectly straight courtyard. At the end of that courtyard, there's nothing but ocean and sky. Standing in that courtyard, you understand why Jonas Salk chose this design. It's a place where serious scientific work happens, but it's also deeply contemplative.

There is something about these brutalist buildings that really speaks to me, especially now. The style is direct, sometimes harsh, but always authentic. They were built during a time when architects believed government and institutions should be bold and ambitious, when concrete could be heroic rather than merely utilitarian.

In 2025, as we grapple with questions about what institutions we can trust and what kind of future we're building, brutalist architecture feels right to me.

You know, for the good reasons. Architectural integrity… not authoritarianism.

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Don’t forget to check out The Hotline Show and subscribe to my new ambient YouTube channel, KALINA.

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Special thank you to Jeffrey Docherty, AD at Seed Magazine, for believing in me way back in the day.

Kristen Neufeld is pretty sure Jonas Salk is rolling over in his grave right now.
Zach Vitale finds raw concrete monumentalism aesthetically challenging.

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