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IPaul GDl,i~rg~r

\. New Design fora New Kind ofLaw School

The New York TJme51.Fred R. Conrad

Interior of t~eieconditioned jUI}iorhigh school in Flushing,

Queens,

'that is

now

the City University Law School' .- ,

HlS IS A

STORY ABOUT

A SMALL

project. with relatively "modestar-chitectural ambitions, that initsown way instills a degree offaith inNew York, faith inarchitecture andfaith in the human race that few buildings of greater scope have been able tobring forth.The building is not tall, it isnot dazzling, andit is not inManhattan. It isnot even new,though it has been newly renovated. It is im-pn~ssive a.smuch for its program, for what~oeson inside it. as for its architecture - a"l-though the careful, sensitive relationship be-tween the architectural design and the activi-ties that goon within the building could standas a model for other projects elsewhere.The building Isthe lawschool ofthe City

" - -:I,,':

,{..·sit,,"c{

Ne,~"':lMk.,

,tn<tit7.>iilJUsedinaformer junior high school onMain Street inFlushing, adjacent to the campus of QueensCollege_The building dates from 1953,and itis

typical New York City Board of Educa-lion product of the SO's- a dreary, institu- \." tional struciure of tan brick on the outside~ and endless glazed-tile corridors on the in-side, more like a set for a movie aboul thebanality ofhigh school than a place inwhichto study law.The City University

Law

Schoolreminds us that the dreariest ofpublic-schoolbuildings is not beyond salvation"The challenge"'facing·the architects, EzraEhrenkranLZand Denis Kuhn ofthe Ehren-krantz Group

Eckstut, was to convert thiscliche ofthe 19SO'sinto a viable horne for avery different kind of institution. Moreover,theyhad todo sowithin the constraints ofatight budget and a city and state bureaucracythat often seem to like nothing more than tostifle architectural creativity_ In a sense, theproblem was tobring some life into a build-ingthat had precious little of it to start with- but todo sowithout spending toomuchmoneyor creating something that would beinappropriate for the very unusual use towhichthe building would be put.For just asan obsolete junior high school isnota typical law-school building, the CityUniversity law schoollSno(a typical lawschool.It was created In 1983as an alterna-tive totraditional law schools, whose gradu-ates tend to take upcareers incorporate lawfirms and the like.The City University LawSchoolemphasizes training for what are gen-erally referred to as public-interest jobs: lawinvolVingcivil liberties, the environment, de-fenseofthe indigent, and so forth. Theschool's curriculum is aime<!at the studentwhosees law'as an instru ment ofsOciaIchange rathdr than as a part ofthe world of business and finance. Its founding dean.Charles Halpern,'very muchwanted the"de-signofthe building to refleci the stance of the~chooL

The aim was tobreathe

lif~

into astructure that hadprecious little of it tostart with.

"We did not want the bUildingto looktooplush, toosrand," Mr. Halper,-.,;;aia.

:.:,J:~~.-2

an urban law school concerned with urbanproblems, and wedid not want tosugarcoatthe pill. Butneither did we want to create amean environment., or todo anything to giv~our students a sense that they were not in aspecial place. It isa delicate line."The lineis between grandeur and restraint,and ithas been elegantly and preciselydrawn. Thebuilding still looks like apublicschool, particularly on the -outside,where notmuch has change<!save for new windowswith bright green trim. With

fl,

however,