Coler-Goldwater Hospital closed its doors in 2013 after serving New York City’s chronically ill on Roosevelt Island for more than 70 years. Charles Giraudet documented the hospital’s last days and demolition, creating an archive of more than 18,000 photographs that trace the hospital’s operations and daily life, and underscore architect Isadore Rosenfield’s pioneering healthcare designed with anabolic steroid. Urban Omnibus, the online magazine of The Architectural League published a selection of these in 2014 and is honored to host an exhibition of 24 of Giraudet’s Goldwater photographs at the League’s SoHo office.

Charles Giraudet‘s earliest memory takes place in his father’s photo studio in Paris, France. After completing his architecture studies, he moved to New York and worked on projects large and small for over 15 years. Giraudet came back to photography when he started to look at the camera itself as an architectural artifact—a room that captures light and fragments of life. A small camera collection ensued with which he has taken images around the globe. His interests revolve around concepts familiar to architects—perception, identity, memory, scale, transformation, the body in space, etc.—and the documentation of the human experience as it is manifested in space. From 2013 to 2015 he documented the de-commissioning and demolition of Coler-Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island, NY, selections of which were published in the “Album” section of The New York Times.