Projects by Name

In 1956, New York University hired Marcel Breuer and Associates to design a series of buildings for the School of Engineering and Science on its Bronx campus. The site overlooked the Harlem River and featured existing neo-classical buildings by Stanford White. Begrisch Hall was built during the same years as the laboratory building known as Technology I, the residence hall and student center. The hall contained two stepped auditoriums whose distinctive shapes were visible in the angled cantilevered form of the concrete building, which seemed to balance on a central fulcrum. A bridge connected the lecture spaces to the second floor of Technology I and helped Breuer and his associate Hamilton Smith navigate the site’s grade change. The building has little obvious decoration, but Breuer carefully integrated the diagonal imprints of the formboards used when pouring the concrete into the overall design. According to the architectural historian Isabelle Hyman, Breuer found inspiration for the dramatic cantilevered forms in Konstantin Melnikov’s Workers’ Club in Moscow (1927-1928).