Michael Graves, who died in 2015, left his famous Warehouse to Princeton University, which rejected the offer
Kean University is eagerly accepting Princeton University's latest reject -- the famed home and studio of the late post-modernist architect Michael Graves, a longtime Princeton professor who donated the building to Princeton in his will, a Kean spokeswoman says.
Graves, one of the most well-known contemporary architects thanks to his iconic neo-classical yet playful homes, corporate and civic buildings and, in no small measure, his groundbreaking design collaboration with Target, died last year at his Princeton home of natural causes. He was 80.
Graves, who had lent his name and expertise to Kean's fledgling architecture school in 2014, the year before his death, wanted his studio, dubbed the Warehouse, along with two other properties, a stone house and a small home, preserved and used for educational purposes, which Princeton was unwilling to do, according to the New York Times, which first reported the news.
But his will allowed his executors to offer the three properties to another nonprofit, and Kean was at the top of its list. Kean President Dawood Farahi said the school would retrofit the buildings for about $300,000, and take on the annual $30,000-$40,000 maintenance costs. Kean's board of trustees approved the purchase of the buildings for $20.
The buildings will remain in Princeton, but will allow Kean students "to see inside the mind of one of the most prolific architects of our time," a Kean spokeswoman tells NJ.com.
The 7,000-square-foot Warehouse was built in a Tuscan vernacular style in 1920s by Italian stonemasons helping build Princeton's Collegiate Gothic campus. Graves used the former rental warehouse as a laboratory for "how domesticity, architecture and artifacts come together in well-appointed interiors," according to his firm.
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