Kingsborough Community College has three buildings with inventive, eye-catching forms. Alas, the older buildings lack the detailing and quality materials that would make them exceptional architecture.
The campus caught my eye when I was scanning Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach/Manhattan Beach area in Google Earth, for a class assignment.
The Robert J. Kibbee Library is named for a former Chancellor of City University. Leon M. Goldstein Performing Arts Center is named for a former President of the college. (There is also a Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences adjoining the campus.)
(Photographers beware: The administration is super-sensitive about photos. No fewer than three campus police converged on me and my camera the morning of my shoot. Even after showing my school ID and assignment sheet, it took 90 minutes and a conversation with the school’s Events VP to get clearance. Throughout the day, campus police stopped to ask if I had permission to photograph.)
Kingsborough Community College Vital Statistics
Robert J. Kibbee Library
- Location: 2000 Oriental Boulevard
- Year completed: 1976
- Architect: Katz Waisman Weber Strauss Warner Burns Toan Lunde
- Floors: 8
- Style: Postmodern
Administration Building / Leon M. Goldstein Performing Arts Center
- Location: 2001 Oriental Boulevard
- Year completed: 1977
- Architect: Katz Waisman Weber Strauss Warner Burns Toan Lunde
- Floors: 2
- Style: Postmodern
Marine & Academic Center
- Location: 2110 Oriental Boulevard
- Year completed: 1991
- Architect: Gruzen Sampton Steinglass
- Floors: 4
- Style: Postmodern
Kingsborough Community College Recommended Reading
- Wikipedia entry
- Kingsborough Community College history (pdf)
- Kingsborough Community College website
- The New York Times A College Beach Party With a Twist, and More Than a Few Wrinkles (August 11, 2014)