The Seagram Building
From its completion in 1957, the Seagram Building, on Park Avenue in New York City, has been considered a landmark and one of the most important and influential buildings of the Twentieth Century. Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in collaboration with Philip Johnson, this is the famed Bauhaus master’s first office tower and only work in New York.
Commissioned by Samuel Bronfman, founder and head of Seagram Distillers, the building was to serve as the executive headquarters of his company. Although he had selected and publicly announced another architect and his plan, his daughter, Phyllis Lambert, did not approve of his choice and wrote an impassioned and reasoned letter to him emphasizing his public responsibility to build the finest building possible. Persuaded, and putting the selection of a new architect in her hands, Mrs. Lambert spent several months studying the work of top architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Corbusier, and Gropius. She ultimately chose Mies, believing it was he who represented the future of architecture and whose ideas were having the most impact on young architects. Mrs. Lambert was proved right, as the Seagram Building has been the prototype for so many others that followed.
Phyllis Lambert then continued on as the Director of Planning. In this capacity, besides overseeing the construction process, she managed the selection of furniture and brought together an important collection of art for the reception areas and offices. Many of the pieces were designed by Mies or other important contemporary designers who worked with Knoll. The intention was to ensure that the interior maintained the integrity and quality of Mies’s exterior design. Every detail of the building and its interior was carefully, meticulously, considered, from the cream-colored travertine marble to the warm tones of book-matched veneers.
Equal attention was given to the furnishings. Barcelona, MR, and BRNO chairs are just some of the Mies designs that furnished these spaces, and were complimented by marble and stainless steel tables.
The Seagram Company moved into eight floors of the building in December 1957, and other tenants followed through the spring of 1958. For the most part the furnishings selected by Mrs. Lambert remained in place during the almost forty-five years of the company’s occupancy. They all represent pieces of architecture history.
reference note courtesy of Skinner, Inc.