Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, New York City (1958)

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, 375 Park Avenue, New York City (1958)

Speakers: Dr. Matthew Postal, Dr. Steven Zucker

http://smarthistory.org/mies-van-der-rohes-seagram-building.html
Note: In the video I call Le Corbusier a French architect. This is somewhat reductionist since he was born in Swizerland and became a French citizen in 1930. (SZ)

(upbeat piano music)

Mail voiceover: I'm with Matthew Postal

who was an architectural historian.

We're on Park Avenue at 53rd Street

and we're standing in front of one
of the most important buildings

in the history of architecture
in the United States.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's,
The Seagram Building.

Male voiceover: It's
built between '56 and '58.

Male voiceover: Can you give me a quick
overview of why this is so important?

Male voiceover: It's
important on a lot of levels.

Mies has been designing buildings
of this kind since the 1920s,

but he never had a chance
to build an office building.

It's the first opportunity
to see his ideas.

Male voiceover: There was
a lot that intervened.

Mies was developing his ideas
first on paper in the late teens,

then in the '20s as you said.

Then, you have the revolution
in Germany, you have the war,

the end of the depression.

Male voiceover: He moves
to the United States,

he designs the campus
of the Armour Institute.

Male voiceover: Then, he has this
commission, Seagram Building.

Seagram was a Canadian
company, it's a liquor company.

Perhaps, the worlds largest
liquor company at that time.

I think they did really
well because of prohibition,

if I remember correctly.

Male voiceover: Because
they're based in Canada.

Male voiceover: Because
they're based in Canada

and all of that liquor could
be smuggled down to Chicago,

across the Great Lakes.

Then, one of them had their
headquarters in New York.

How did this come to be?

Male voiceover: The background
of the Seagram building is,

that they decided to build a
headquarters in the mid '50s.

They looked across the street.

They were impressed by all the
notoriety that Lever House had garnered.

Male voiceover: Which was
that first real modern icon

to show off on Park Avenue.

Male voiceover: First curtain
wall building in Manhattan.

Male voiceover: Okay.

Male voiceover: Charles Luckman,

who had been one of the chief
executive officer at Lever,

had been trained as an architect

and had left Lever to open his own firm.

Male voiceover: Did Bronfman, who
ran Seagrams, turn to Luckman then?

How did that ...

Male voiceover: He hires Luckman

and Luckman gets way past
the preliminary drawings.

There's a large model.

The model is sitting in his office

when his daughter comes
to visit, Phyllis Lambert.

Male voiceover: What did
she have to do with it?

Male voiceover: She was
studying at Harvard,

in the graduate school of
architecture and design.

She said, "Dad, that's the most
awful thing I've ever seen."

Male voiceover: (laughs) I
hope Luckman's not listening.

What does she do?

Male voiceover: She says,
"Dad, we're going to go over
to the Museum of Modern Art"

"and you're going to
speak to Arthur Drexler,"

"the chief curator of architecture."

Male voiceover: MoMA is only
a few blocks down the street,

on 53rd as well, so this
was not a long stroll.

What did Drexler tell Bronfman?

Male voiceover: Drexler said
there were three choices.

There was Le Corbusier.

Male voiceover: The French architect.

Male voiceover: Right. Too
difficult to work with, he said.

Male voiceover: Okay.

Male voiceover: There
was Frank Llyod Wright.

Male voiceover: The obvious
choice, the American.

Male voiceover: But, too old.

Male voiceover: Ahh.

Male voiceover: He was
almost 90 years old.

Male voiceover: He suggested that
they go with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Male voiceover: That's what they did.

What has Mies done here?

Male voiceover: He's built
a relatively simple form,

a bronze clad slab of a tower.

Male voiceover: Hold on a second.

It's bronze?

Male voiceover: It is bronze.

Male voiceover: Sculptures
are made out of bronze.

Male voiceover: That's why I always say

that this is not only one of the modern
icons of architecture in New York,

but it's also one of the most
classical buildings in the city.

Male voiceover: That's interesting.

You're thinking classicism in terms of
the ancient Greeks creating sculptures.

This is a building that actually
has a patina like a sculpture would.

It's not just a uniform dark brown black.

It's actually got some
subtlety to the color

in really an enormously sophisticated way.

Male voiceover: It's a little
darker than it originally was,

but imagine that each
year, at least once a year,

they rub it with oil, so
that it does not oxidize.

Male voiceover: Oh, that's great.

So that it doesn't turn green
or red or what have you.

Male voiceover: Yes.

Male voiceover: Any of the chemical
reactions that the bronze might have.

Male voiceover: Mies really
loved Greek architecture

over all other things,
so he designed a building

that is very symmetrical, it's
a very disciplined aesthetic.

If you look at the various
pillars that run across the front,

they look vaguely like fluted columns.

Male voiceover: That's really interesting,

because they do have
these vertical striation,

so it a kind of fluting.

In fact, the whole building
is up on this platform.

It's almost like a Greek style,

as if we were looking at the Parthenon.

Male voiceover: Absolutely.

Male voiceover: There's a
sense of proportion here

that feels very classical and it's
incredible to be able to say that

despite the buildings height,
because this is a big building.

The Greeks were working
on a much smaller scale.

The Romans were working on
a slightly larger scale,

but nothing like this.

Male voiceover: That's the challenge.

How do you distill the
lessons of the ancients

in a building that's
made of metal and glass.

Male voiceover: Is that
even an absurd project,

to try to take an industrial
culture and an industrial material

and wed it somehow to buildings
that are 2,500 years old?

Male voiceover: Mies would say, "No."

Male voiceover: Why is that legitimate?

Male voiceover: Because I
think that the modern movement

in architecture was always
looking for some discipline.

It was always looking
to balance old and new.

This was one of the
solutions that he found.

Male voiceover: Let's take
a look at the building.

It's very clean.

When you look up at it
from below, it just soars.

The term that comes to
mind is vertical velocity.

Male voiceover: LIke an ascent.

Male voiceover: We just
rocket upward, visually.

How is he pulling that off?

Male voiceover: Look carefully
at the vertical mullions

that are between the window bays.

They basically rise without interruption
from the base of the tower to the top.

Male voiceover: I'm looking at those now

and they're not simple mullions,
they look like I-beams.

They have girders.

Male voiceover: Right.

Male voiceover: What's going on?

Male voiceover: They serve no
purpose other than decoration.

Male voiceover: Decoratively, they
make the surface so that it's not flat,

they give it some texture.

Male voiceover: A little depth.

Male voiceover: They
give it a little depth.

It gives it a bit of a play
of light as well, and shadow.

Male voiceover: I think that when
the building was constructed,

they talked about industrial material
and honesty and those kinds of issues,

but as time has passed,

they recognized that it wasn't beyond Mies

to experiment with a
little bit of decoration.

Male voiceover: It's decorative, but it's
a kind of decorative symbolism, isn't it,

because the I-beam is the thing that's
actually holding the building up?

These are de-purposed,
if that makes sense.

Male voiceover: Not these I-beams.

Male voiceover: Right, not these I-beams.

Male voiceover: That's right.

Male voiceover: They're reflecting
what's inside the building,

the actual interior structure.

Male voiceover: Yeah, on a smaller scale.

Male voiceover: I assume that the inside,

they're actually steel,
they're not bronze.

Male voiceover: Right, and you
would never want to see them.

They would be kind of unattractive.

Male voiceover: Mies has got these I-beams

and they really do raise us upward.

They do function then,
in a decorative sense.

Of course, we were talking
about the classical a moment ago

and the Parthenon for instance,
was heavily decorated,

so there's no prohibition there,

but it does seem to be a
little bit anathema to the way

that we generally think
of Mies van der Rohe

or we think of the
modern movement as really

wanting to strip away the
unnecessary and the decorative.

Yet, he's allowing for it.

Male voiceover: I think it's
a stereotype about modernism,

to think that it's without any decoration.

Male voiceover: Because there
is actually gorgeous use of

not only the bronze exterior,
but the mosaics, marble, granite

and you've got these beautiful reflecting
pools in front of the building.

Male voiceover: Based on this
kind of square-foot budget,

this is one of the most
expensive buildings of it's time.

Male voiceover: Because it's
not using it's entire ...

Male voiceover: It's not
using the entire lot,

but no, because of the materials.

Bronze cost a great
deal more than aluminum.

Male voiceover: It's a fortune.

It's mostly copper.

Male voiceover: Look at the travertine
that the elevator banks are wrapped in.

Male voiceover: You know what
I find really interesting?

When you look at those elevator banks,

- and what, there are four of them -

they actually move past the glass membrane

that encloses the lobby.

The glass is like a soap bubble
and they've pushed through it.

Male voiceover: I think they
give the building real solidity.

Male voiceover: That's
what visually holds it up.

Male voiceover: Yeah, and
also it makes reference

back to the ancient Romans.

Male voiceover: How so?

Male voiceover: Because
that's Roman travertine.

Male voiceover: Oh, it's travertine.

Of course. Right.

Male voiceover: Though again, Mies
is constantly referencing antiquity.

Male voiceover: You had mentioned,
just a moment ago, this forecourt.

The building is really not
using much of it's footprint.

The building is really deeply
set back on Park Avenue.

Male voiceover: Yeah, about
as far back as it could.

Although, it has a couple of
smaller editions in the back.

When Mies was asked why did he
set the building back so far,

he said that he wanted to pay respect

to the Racquet and Tennis Club
directly across the street,

that he did not want to overwhelm

that great Italian Palazzo
by McKim, Mead and White.

Male voiceover: It's actually one
of the great buildings in New York.

This is quite an intersection.

You have Lever House, Tennis and
Racquet and you've got Seagram.

That's a hell of a triumvirate.

Male voiceover: I think he
wanted to create a corridor
for his building to be viewed.

I think by coming up those
steps at the end of the Palazzo

and looking up at the building,

it provides an architectural experience
that people don't often have in New York.

Male voiceover: There's
something else here,

maybe it's a classical element as well,

it feels like this is a public space,

a place where people gather.

In fact, as we're here, there are
people who walk and stop and talk,

there were people sitting
by the reflecting pools.

It becomes a kind of social space.

Is that something that
Mies was interested in?

Male voiceover: You know, I think
if you look at it critically,

he kept the seating at
the edge to a minimum.

There never appears to have been any
attempt to encourage people to stay here.

Male voiceover: That's
an interesting issue.

One of the faults that
is found with modernism

is it's antiseptic
quality, is it's coldness,

it's lack of humanity in human scale.

Do you think that Mies
has created something

that allows us to occupy it comfortably,

or is this something that
is alienating in some way?

Male voiceover: I think it
depends where you come from.

(upbeat piano music)