Stevenson Library – Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, Dutchess County, New York

A small school with a progressive reputation, Bard sits high on a bluff above the Hudson River in Annandale, commanding views that have scarcely changed since the days of the Hudson River painters. Its original library, a perfectly proportioned Ionic temple built in 1893, is the ideal architectural accent for this American arcadia. Of ivory brick surrounded by weathered stone columns, this Greek Revival gem stands for the idea of America as a natural paradise where democracy could take root.

… in his competition-winning design, Venturi argued that the best way to honor the temple’s classical symmetry was not to ape it but to contrast it. Attached to the western wall of the earlier annex, flaring slightly as it projects beyond the temple’s portico, his addition is colorful, varied and lop-sided where the temple is monochrome, uniform and symmetrical; flatly surfaced instead of deeply recessed; marked by horizontal bands that counter the temple’s columns. The addition is the temple’s dream of itself in another life – in modern life, in fact. … Windows create counterpoint patterns, and also adjust the addition into harmonious relationship with the temple. Their rhythm and proportions echo the Ionic colonnade, while the mullions suggest fluting and even impart an illusion of roundness. (New York Times, October 31, 1993)