Location: 375 Park Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets, New York, New York, USA
Architect: Mies van der Rohe with Phillip Johnson
Date Completed: 1958
Height: 525 feet (160 meters)
The only building in New York City designed by architectural master Mies van der Rohe, the
Seagram Building, epitomizes the ideals of the modernist movement so pitifully exhibited
by most other modern skyscrapers.
Owner Samuel Bronfman simply required that the new headquarters of his massive distillery
operation be "the crowning glory of everyone's work." His daughter, the
architect Phyllis Lambert, persuaded him to commission Mies van der Rohe.
Essentially a classical building, the Seagram Building is set back on a broad plaza. Its
cubic structure is articulated by extruded bronze I-beams imposed on a brooding dark glass
curtain wall. The tower sits squarely on a series of two story bronze columns and is
surrounded by a twenty-eight foot high arcade. This design led to a 1961 zoning regulation
to increase open spaces around tall buildings, ending full-site setback towers.
The combination of the bronze I-beams and the dark glass curtain wall make the Seagram
Building seem like different structures when viewed from different angles. A black
glass tower from one angle, a polished bronze one from another. The color can change from
a brown so dark as to appear almost black to a soft golden brown, depending on the angle
of view and the lighting.
The large plaza (the building is set back a full one- hundred feet from Park Avenue), with
its two rectangular pools and marble parapet, is an entirely pleasing place to be given
its sparseness, a trick that few other modern plazas have accomplished.
Seagram Building
