REPRIEVE FOR PAUL RUDOLPH HOUSE IN CONNECTICUT

A Connecticut judge on Friday ordered demolition halted on a Westport modernist house designed by renowned architect Paul Rudolph, reports the New York Times. But the judge, Taggart D. Adams of State Superior Court, refused a request by a historic preservation group to order the owner of the house or its prospective buyer to cover the roof, which has been stripped of its tar covering, leaving the interior exposed. The group, the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, had argued that with rain forecast over the weekend, the house could suffer “demolition by neglect.” The forty-two-hundred-square-foot stucco house, designed in 1972, is an elongated series of interconnecting cubes with cantilevered panels that hang above large windows. Because the house is less than sixty years old, the Westport Historic District Commission cannot legally seek to delay the demolition.