The New School for Social Research - Eugene Lang College (New York City, New York) | university

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8-story university building completed in 1931. Designed by Joseph Urban for the New School for Social Research, it contains an auditorium and classrooms. On West 12th Street a brick cantilevered front projects out over the polished black stone entrance to the auditorium. The accent above is horizontal, with wide bands of brickwork between continuous steel sash which are returned to setbacks on either side. The brickwork alternates between bands of light-colored brick and those of black, giving a striated surface effect to the entire front. This design was severe even for its day. The adjoining 8-story annex on the west side is the Jacob M. Kaplan Building, designed in 1955 by Mayer, Whittlesey & Glass, and opened in 1960. It is clad in metal and glass, with grey spandrel panels.

A narrow section in the middle of the site traverses a courtyard to another section of the building fronting West 11th Street, which houses the New School's Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts. It has a simple 2-story base with large plate glass windows, permitting one to look into the lobby and central courtyard beyond it. The facade is clad in aluminum and glass in an International style, with yellow spandrel panels. A metal bris-de-soleil caps the setback above the 4th floor.

The lobby contains a mural entitled “Ecuadorian Festival” which was painted by Camilo Egas in 1933 who was a famed Latin American painter and former director of the art department at The New School. A separate 10-panel mural series, titled “America Today,” by Thomas H. Benton was sold to AXA and ultimately put on display at the Met where it remains today.

www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/pdf/GV2.pdf#page=38
archive.org/details/architecturalrec67aprnewy/page/n104...
www.atlasobscura.com/places/camilo-egas-mural-at-the-ne...