Building Seagram

A personal, authoritative history of one of the 20th centurys most influential buildings The Seagram building rises over New Yorks Park Avenue, seeming to float above the street with perfect lines of bronze and glass. Considered one of the greatest icons of twentieth-century architecture, the building was commissioned by Samuel Bronfman, founder of the Canadian distillery dynasty Seagram. Bronfmans daughter Phyllis Lambert was twenty-seven years old when she took over the search for an architect and chose Mies van der Rohe (18861969), a pioneering modern master of what he termed skin and bones architecture. Mies, who designed the elegant, deceptively simple thirty-eight-story tower along with Philip Johnson (19062005), emphasized the beauty of structure and fine materials, and set the building back from the avenue, creating an urban oasis with the buildings plaza. Through her choice, Lambert established her role as a leading architectural patron and singlehandedly changed the face of American urban architecture. Building Seagram is a comprehensive personal and scholarly history of a major building and its architectural, cultural, and urban legacies. Lambert makes use of previously unpublished personal archives, company correspondence, and photographs to tell an insiders view of the debates, resolutions, and unknown dramas of the buildings construction, as well as its crucial role in the history of modern art and architectural culture.