If you attended high school in this building, you probably heard a “suburban legend” about the architect. Something about designing prisons for a living and/or committing suicide. Apparently kids can’t cozy-up to this brutalist building, so they make up stories like these.
Brutalism was big in 60s and 70s architecture. It meant a brutally straightforward attitude, unabashed use of concrete, and totally unadorned facades. No pretty skin. No soft or warm anything. Brutalist buildings wear their concrete bones like insects wear their exoskeletons.
This “come as you are” attitude stemmed from the lean years following World War II, when building materials were in short supply. You used concrete and didn’t apologize. By the late 60s, it was hip to show “honesty” in architecture, both here and abroad.
The architect for Burlington High School was Earl Flansburg.
He had nothing to do with prisons. He had a LOT to do with his alma mater, Cornell University. He made a big splash in the architectural world in 1971 when he built Cornell’s campus store directly into a hillside, basically creating a store in a cave.
His firm has done a lot of buildings in the Boston area, including the Park School in Brookline:
And the Boston Design Center in the Seaport District:
One of his children is Paxus Calta, a writer, political activist, philosopher and non-boring person.
The other is John Flansburgh. That’s him on the left. He co-founded the band They Might Be Giants, best-known for this:
Earl Flansburg died in 2009, and not by suicide.
His architectural firm still lives on. Click the photo to visit the website.
So that’s the benign truth about Burlington’s brutalist building. Instead of wincing at it and making up stories, we should consider it ahead of its time. Wouldn’t this look right at home at the front door? Brutalism has entered the automotive space.
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