Christina Craig

Professor Gill

IARC 1200

21 October 2018

Seagram Building

Bauhaus to Our House, by Tom Wolfe, is largely a humorous critique of modern

architecture, specifically, the international style. In Louis Kahn’s words, international style is

about “unconcealed structure” in reference to his first significant commission, Yale University

Art Gallery (Wolfe 51). The Art Gallery fits into what Wolfe calls the “Yale Box” which alludes

to a time in which everyone at Yale was seemingly creating the same box of glass, steel, and

concrete with beige bricks occasionally (Wolfe 47). This “box”, he argues, can be applied to

majority of the international style buildings we see today like the Seagram Building.

One of the reasons that the international style became prevalent was due to the worker

housing movement. Financing for the American version of the 1920s Dutch and German

Siedlungen housing began in the 1950s (Wolfe 53). The intended worker housing became public

housing, colloquially called the “projects”. Workers did not reside in the housing though, they

commuted to suburbs; those that did and still do reside in worker housing today are generally not

working at all and are on welfare (Wolfe 54). In 1958, the Seagram Building was erected as a

“monument”, in the words of Wolfe, of the international style/ modern architecture.

After having competed out Le Corbusier, Gropius, and even Frank Lloyd Wright for the

position, Mies van de Rohe was given an unlimited budget by Phyllis Lambert, Seagram’s

heiress, to construct the new worker housing (Lamster 2013). Built to be nonbourgeois, the

building stood at 38-storys on 52nd street and Park Avenue in New York (Wolfe 58). Bronze and
pinkish gray glass, to blend with the bronze as it ages, were chosen for the tower along with

“luxurious finishes like marble” and travertine (Alberts 2013). Three football fields worth,

3,200,000 pounds, of bronze was used for the exterior walls of the building, breaking a world

record (1956). The initial investment was not the only expense though; regular maintenance of

the bronze is necessary with yearly bronze oilings (Alberts 2013). At completion, the building

cost $36 million before taxes, $41 million making it the world’s most expensive skyscraper at the

time (Bagli 2000).

After completion, Mies had one big problem – window coverings. The “purity of design”

would be tainted by mix-matched shades types, colors, and height of shade openings (Wolfe 59).

In the ideal scenario, there would be no window coverings at all. However, Mies found a

solution. The tenants were restricted to white blinds or shades that could only be closed, open, or

halfway. He achieved this quite well because the blinds were engineered to only stay still in

those three positions. However, he found issue with office workers pushing furniture against the

walls of glass. Wolfe jokes, or maybe not, that the night custodial staff pulled down the

“barricades” and enforced the blinds (Wolfe 61).

In 1979, the building first sold to Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association for $70.5

million. In 2000, it sold for $375 million for real estate purposes. Now called by its historic

address, 375 Park Avenue is home to investment management firms, IT services, global private

equity firms, financial services, and architecture firms. The building has also been featured in

much of popular culture like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Bill Murray’s Office in Scrooged, and in the

movie “Hitch” staring Will Smith. The Seagram Building also housed James Beard’s restaurant

The Four Seasons until 2016. This restaurant is credited with seasonally-changing menus in
America, wine pairings for each season, and the first US restaurant to cook using fresh, wild

mushrooms.

Wolfe was described as an enthusiastic and exciting writer n the best of terms, but others

described it as hyperbolic and uninformed. He made his name as a New Journalism-style author

which added literary elements in writing. His work was incredibly diverse from The Electric

Kool-Aid Acid Test about Ken Kasey and government LSD trials to Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing

the Flak Catchers about the conflict between black rage and white guilt to The Right Story about

why astronauts wanted to go to space; his first and only other art critique, The Painted Word,

was published in 1975 - six years earlier than Bauhaus to Our House, whose arguments were

mirrored likewise.

In regards to Bauhaus to Our House, Tom Wolfe lived up to both expectations. He was

enthusiastic and helped the topic become interesting; however, he was also hyperbolic and had

no actual expertise in the area. Many of his statements were able to be validated by outside

sources, but the sarcasm created confusion about whether some of the statement were true. The

concept of the “Yale Box” reigned true as an analysis of the Seagram Building, but the “box”

was not a concept that was easy to find outside information on (except in memes). Lastly,

identification of the Seagram Building as worker housing was unable to be verified. It seems

ludicrous to spend $41 million on worker housing in any sense.

Works Cited

Alberts, Hana R. “6 Things You May Not Know About The Seagram Building.” Curbed NY,

Curbed NY, 5 Apr. 2013, ny.curbed.com/2013/4/5/10256678/6-things-you-may-not-

know-about-the-seagram-building.

Bagli, Charles V. “On Park Avenue, Another Trophy Changes Hands.” The New York

Times, The New York Times, 12 Oct. 2000, www.nytimes.com/2000/10/12/nyregion/on-

park-avenue-another-trophy-changes-hands.html.

Lamster, Mark. “'Building Seagram,' Phyllis Lambert's New Architecture Book.” The New York

Times, The New York Times, 3 Apr. 2013,

www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/arts/design/building-seagram-phyllis-lamberts-new-

architecture-book.html.

“New Skyscraper on Park Avenue To Be First Sheathed in Bronze; 38-Story House of Seagram

Will Use 3,200,000 Pounds of Alloy in Outer Walls Colored for Weathering.” The New

York Times, The New York Times, 2 Mar. 1956,

www.nytimes.com/1956/03/02/archives/new-skyscraper-on-park-avenue-to-be-first-

sheathed-in-bronze.html.

Wolfe, Tom. From Bauhaus to Our House. Picador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.