Word: seagram
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Built at an estimated cost of $35 million, the Seagram monument is set back on a twin-fountained, granite and marble plaza that serves as its pedestal. By day it is a soaring column the color of an old cannon; by night it is a giant, glowing shaft punctuating the Manhattan skyline (see color page). It is the definitive statement of what a skyscraper can be by the architect whom most purists hail as the master of glass-and-steel design: Chicago's German-born Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 71 (TIME, June...
Search for the Man. Mies van der Rohe's chance to build his first Manhattan skyscraper came through a young woman who is neither a corporation executive nor a professional architect, but has a personal interest in both Seagram's and architecture. Mrs. Phyllis Bronfman Lambert, 31, daughter of Seagram President Samuel Bronfman, was living in Europe in 1954 when she saw a magazine story about the building her father proposed to build. "I was boiling with fury," she recalls. "I wrote him that he wanted a really fine building, and he was lucky to be living...
Accent of Emptiness. Mies van der Rohe believes that "structure is spiritual"; his aim is to express the skyscraper's essential steel cage as dramatically as possible and with a maximum of economy. In the Seagram building, he did this with deceptive simplicity. To avoid the stairstep building plan that Manhattan architects have overused to meet zoning requirements (the tower must be only 25% of the site area), Mies sacrificed valuable Park Avenue frontage, threw open a wide plaza. This gave him an opportunity to create an accent of emptiness, at the same time gave his building a dramatic...
Flanking the central tower, Mies designed wings, thereby gained valuable rental area and created a backdrop that from the street effectively masks the old Y.W.C.A. building at the rear of Seagram's. To strengthen the structure against winds, he designed concrete sheer walls for two sides in the rear. Bronze sheathing for the exterior appealed to Mies because "it is a very noble material and lasts forever if it is used in the right way." Expected to weather to a darker shade, except where the wind scours the edges bright, the bronze will be hand-wiped from...
...them in harmony with the building. To heighten the impact of Mies's austere geometry, the building and plaza were finished off in rich materials. Siding the plaza are thick strips of green marble; inside, the elevator lobbies have travertine walls and terrazzo floors. In the Seagram offices most walls are covered with vinyl plastic, the executive suites with panels of English oak, the couch in the executive washroom with white plastic. Cracked Architecture Critic Henry Russell Hitchcock: "I've never seen more of less...