North Carolina is home to the country’s largest research park, called Research Triangle Park. Up until 2021, visitors and workers in the park had the chance to see the Elion-Hitchings Building, a spectacular brutalist structure by Paul Rudolph. Alas, the building has been demolished. All that remains are photographs. Let’s learn about its history and design.
Paul Rudolph Designs the Burroughs Wellcome Building
Research and manufacturing facilities company Burroughs Wellcome & Company commissioned Paul Rudolph to design its new headquarters after buying a plot in the Research Triangle Park in 1969.
Rudolph designed the building to be flexible and scalable, with the goal of future expansions. Construction started in 1969, and completed in 1972. The resulting building had a futuristic look and feel, offering a unique work environment that made the most of the natural beauty of the rural site. It was originally known as the Burroughs Wellcome Building.
A Geometric, Scalable Design
Rudolph came up with an S-shaped layout featuring a pair of large courtyards. The entry court was enclosed by the reception area, auditorium, library, cafeteria and admin offices. The service yard court was surrounded by the labs and quarters for the test animals, plus additional offices focused on research.
The terraced structure had a strong emphasis on geometric forms, with hexagonal shapes calling to mind a beehive. The stepped design created a resemblance to a Mesopotamian ziggurat or a Mayan stepped pyramid, a look simultaneously ancient, yet futuristic. You may also notice some resemblance to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. This is not a coincidence. It was one of Rudolph’s inspirations.
Rudolph’s Elion-Hitchings Building was largely greeted with public acclaim. Many described it as an innovative and exciting structure that instantly had become a local landmark. Like just about any brutalist structure, it had its detractors. But on the whole, it didn’t inspire the controversy of some of Rudolph’s other buildings.
The Burroughs Wellcome Building was renamed to the Elion-Hitchings Building in 1988 in honor of Burroughs Wellcome employees Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings, both Nobel Prize winners.
Disrepair and Demolishment
Eventually, Glaxo P.L.C. acquired Wellcome P.L.C. After a merger, that company became known as GlaxoSmithKline. Glaxo made good use of the building for decades. But following the merger, it relocated to another site. United Therapeutics then purchased the Elion-Hitchings Building.
By that time, the structure had received some expansions, as was the original plan. But unfortunately, the buildings were deteriorating. United Therapeutics tore down some of the structures in 2014. They claimed they would renovate and restore the rest. But they didn’t. In 2020, they declared nothing could be done but demolish it.
Conservationists fought back, but their efforts were not enough. The Elion-Hitchings Building was torn down in its entirety. Its legacy now remains only in our memories and imaginations.
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Paul Rudolph’s UMass Dartmouth: A Unified Core for Learning and Rudolph Hall: Paul Rudolph’s Controversial Classic at Yale University.
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