Design Reserach Project
Page 24
Public Contribution in High-Rise Building Design
@ New York City
Segram Building

Address: 375 Park Ave

Architect: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson and Kahn & Jacobs
Background
It was complete in 1958, the origin of the international style building that changed the skyline image of New York City and the whole world. Mies van der Rohe was selected to design this Seagram Building because the daughter of Seagram's President is an architect. She has a vision for the new modern Master.
It is the development of the idea from 1951 Lake Shore Drive Apartment in Chicago. Phillip Johnson was selected to design the interior works and finally has his own office on the 37th floor of the building. This plot of land was planed to be the space for Metropolitan Opera in 1954 but this project was moved to Lincoln Center in Upper West Side.
The building was placed at the "rear" portion of the end-of-block site, off the Park Ave, with the front consisting of a stepped-up, pink travertine-clad open plaza with twin fountain pools flanked by trees. The plaza offers no seating and, in fact, Mies wanted the pools to be filled to the brim to prevent people from even sitting on their edge.
Picture: Plaza at Park Ave.Side on Sunday
Picture: Plaza at Park Ave. Side on weekday with the fountain in the pond that nobody can use
The 38-story façade consists of alternating bands of bronze plating and brown-tinted glass. Between the windows, there are vertical decorative bronze I-profiled beams attached to the mullions to emphasize the vertical rise of the façade. Mies stated that this was his only building in USA which met exactly his European Standards.
 
Due to the material choices and custom-made details (largely designed by Philip Johnson) the building became -- per built square meter -- the most expensive skyscraper ever; it cost $36 million, approximately twice as much as normally. In this lavish expenditure, along with the "wasting" of rentable (and thus, taxable) space by providing a large, unbuilt open plaza, lay also the seed for financial loss: the city officials deemed the building excessively prestigious as well as losing the city tax income, and thus imposed on it a taxation value that was nearly double (per square meter) that of other contemporary skyscrapers nearby.
In 1972 Seagram's moved over half of its staff from the building in order to cut costs. Four years later the company itself proposed a landmark status for the building, a request which however was turned down by the Commission due to the young age of the building.
Not in all respects were the proceedings with the city officials failures: the success of the plaza scheme (both as a popular haven and an exhibition space) led to the revision of the zoning regulations to encourage other builders to follow the suit.
The lobby has glass walls with typically "Miesian" thin-framed mullions. It is an extension of the outside plaza with its similar stone cladding on floor, as well as on the elevator bank walls. The ceiling consists of glass tiles.
The adjoining two-roomed Four Seasons Restaurant has its entrance on 52nd Street. The south dining room has French walnut tree panel decor as well as two Richard Lippold brass constructions. The north dining room has landscape decor and a pool in the middle. In the adjoining corridor hangs Picasso's backdrop for "Le Tricorne" ballet (1929)