The Seagram Building

The Seagram Building is prime example of the international style of design in the 20th century. The building is a true landmark of the city having an open plaza at the base of the building with high ceilings, floor to ceiling tinted windows and bronze mullions. Its imperious design, set in a plaza with fountain, was imitated many times and became an icon of North American corporate design. Mies is known as the father of the steel and glass structure. Mies designed many buildings during his life however none of the would be as popular and famous as the Seagram Building.

In real estate and architecture, some dreams need a lot of staying power to get realized. The Seagram Building is the realization, some three decades late, of Mies van der Rohe's dream of a glass-covered, high-rise office tower that would provide a stunning monument to the International Style's faith in simplicity and clarity.

The Seagram building is the prime example of Mies' masterful use of steel. The bronze sheathed skyscraper soars thirty-eight stories high from its 90-foot deep pink granite plaza. Volume is everywhere apparent in this building, from the great columns that bring the structure to the ground to the welded bronze mullions holding the glass sheets in place. As enormous of a project this was, great attention was paid to purity and precision of design, following the fundamentals of the style. Details from doorknobs to stainless steel furniture throughout the building, spacious layout and functional use of all elements from interior office space to shower rooms, the Picasso backdrop signaling the entrance, the cantilevered portico entrance, and the luminous ceiling, make this one of the worlds most elegant skyscrapers. More importantly, pertaining to the International Style, Mies has expressed his elegant use of materials, and technological perfection throughout the building.

Mies' well known theory of "less is more" is apparent by the spaciousness and functional quality of the Seagram building; everything serves a purpose, either for aesthetic appeal or functionality. "Less is more" is a concept used throughout the architectural world today. "Mies van der Rohe stands as a great moral force of the International Style. The essence of architecture, to Mies, lies in the expression of structure. And his precise, sophisticated, and consistent style of architecture sets an example for architects preceding him and reaches the world over."

Its greatness lies in the tower's proportions, the fineness of its bronze and dark-tinted glass curtain walls, and its expansive front plaza.

Yet its much heralded plaza, which led the city to rewrite much of its office district zoning in 1961 to encourage similar open public spaces in new projects, is not really appropriate or necessary on as broad a landscaped boulevard as Park Avenue.

Although the plaza has no formal seating, its low, dark green, polished granite north and south walls are Park Avenue's most popular seating areas in good weather. The plaza has two rectangular reflecting pools at its north and south ends that are filled with forests of Christmas trees during the holiday seasons. For many years, a large Henry Moore sculpture was placed off-center in the plaza.

Credit for the Seagram's high quality goes to Phyllis Lambert, the daughter of Samuel Bronfman, the head of Seagram's. Bronfman had selected Charles Luckman to design his proposed tower at the site. Luckman, as chance had it, had been the chief executive officer of Lever Brothers before becoming a full-time architect. Lambert, who had studied architecture, convinced her father to switch architects and upgrade the project and recommended Mies van der Rohe, who was internationally recognized but without a signature building in New York.

With more than 800,000 square feet of office space, the Seagram Building is not petite. By setting back its tower, whose front facade rises without setbacks, so far on the site to create the plaza, the building sacrificed considerable rental space under the zoning then in effect.

In 1976, the building's owners requested designation of its exterior as an official city landmark, an extremely rare action as most commercial property owners were, and still are mostly, very wary of design reviews and potential higher preservation costs associated with such landmark designations. The city's laws do not permit landmark designations for buildings less than 30 years old. That restriction resulted in the unfortunate abuse of many fine commercial properties. The city only created its Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1965 and many preservationists were greatly, though not publicly, concerned that major landlords might legally challenge the city's new landmark regulations and also argued that buildings should stand the test of time before being designated.

In 1980, the building, still undesignated, was sold to the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, a huge pension fund long active in real estate, with the provision that it apply for landmark designation for the property when it became eligible in 1988.

By 1988, many city preservationists felt that not only should the Seagram's exterior be designated, but also the interior of the Four Seasons Restaurant. The building owners strongly opposed the interior designation on the grounds that restaurants tend to have shorter life cycles than buildings