Though best known for his Sarasota houses and monumental concrete institutional buildings, beginning in 1965 Paul Rudolph designed many innovative, NYC residences with fantastic qualities that have received little attention. Always experimenting and fascinated by lighting, Rudolph achieved otherworldly effects using elements scavenged from the city’s restaurant and manufacturing supply stores along Canal Street. These interiors also reveal Rudolph’s awareness of the New York avant-garde’s work, such as the infinity chambers of Yayoi Kusama. Inspired by New York, Rudolph successfully transformed himself at mid-career in the 1960s into an interior architect who could transport himself and his clients into other dimensions using just mirrors and plexiglass.

Timothy M. Rohan is associate professor in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. As a graduate of Yale and Harvard universities, his research focuses upon architecture and design from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Rohan has written articles for both scholarly and popular publications such as The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Art in America, and The Boston Globe, as well for edited volumes. He is the author of The Architecture of Paul Rudolph (Yale, 2014), the first monograph about the postwar architect. Rohan has also edited Reassessing Rudolph (Yale, 2017), a volume of scholarly articles about Rudolph and is currently working on a new book about late twentieth-century Manhattan residential interiors