WHY: From “Modern Architecture in New York”

“To the visitor willing to take the city as he finds it, with its remarkable concentration of construction, its sophisticated mixture of sources, its enterprising alertness to architectural advance, its unceasing change and excitement, New York is an unparalleled visual drama.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Modern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

WHERE: 460 Park Avenue

“This building, a standard commercial solution of the curtain-wall structure, demonstrates the use of an unconventional, lightweight material – aluminum – for the outer skin.  The spandrel sections are stamped aluminum panels, standardized in size, shape and pattern, prefabricated at the factory, installed quickly and easily at the site.  (It is possible for a building of this type to be completely faced with such panels in as little as five days.)  The stamped pattern makes the material rigid and prevents the uneven, wavy highlights that would ordinarily be visible on a flat metal surface.  In this case, the design is an efficient but routine solution.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Modern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via Google.

WHEN: 1963: Pan Am Building

“The new terminal focus for the long sweeping vista of Park Avenue will be the Pan Am Building, a behemoth-sized office structure astride the Grand Central Station complex.  An octagonal structure 59 stories tall encompassing 2,400,000 sq. ft., it will house 25,000 office workers and executives when it is completed in 1963.  The erection of such an overwhelming structure – the largest single office building in New York – will radically alter the existing scale of the buildings along Park Avenue.  It will also add an extraordinary burden to existing pedestrian and transportation facilities, and in these aspects its anti-social character directly contradicts the teachings of Walter Gropius, who has collaborated in its design.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Modern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via nyc-architecture.com.

WHAT: Seagram Building

“The Seagram Building is one of New York’s truly distinguished structures, by one of the world’s formost architects – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.  It is designed with classic simplicity, the tower and plaza being ordered in a formal, symmetrical plan.  This classicism is most evident in its proportions and construction – a carefully studied ratio of three to five bays dictates the organization of the steel cage and forms the basic unit of structure and design.  Flanking the central column are two balanced wings, which sere to enlarge the available office space and provide a setting for the main vertical shaft

“This extremely disciplined, rational scheme is executed in materials of exceptional richness and luxury.  The 90-foot deep plaza, with its twin fountains, is paved with slightly pink granite and enclosed on two sides with benches, or ‘hedges,’ of green Italian marble.  The lobby, approached from beneath a simple portico, has travertine sheathing the elevator banks, and an Italian glass-mosaic ceiling in tones of grey and brown; elevator interiors are richly surfaced with woven bands of bronze and stainless steel.  The luxurious restaurant, The Four Seasons, which is entered at the rear of the lobby, presents the visitor with an early Picasso ballet backdrop from ‘Le Tricorne’ (1929).  The restaurant, designed by Phillip Johnson, presents two handsomely proportioned and detailed rooms, one of them paneled in French walnut.  Two constructions, by Richard Lippold, of shimmering brass rods suspended from the ceiling are perhaps the most successfully integrated sculptures to be found in a modern interior.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Modern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via archdaily.com.

WHO: Frank Lloyd Wright, Mercedes-Benz Showroom, 430 Park Avenue,1955

“This de luxe showroom, at the corner of Park Avenue and 56^th Street, was, until the completion of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1959, Frank Lloyd Wright’s only visible work in New York.  The spiral ramp motif, which Wright had used earlier for the Morris Shop in San Francisco, and which was to be so beautiful an element in the Guggenheim, is employed here, though far less effectively, in part because of the low ceiling and partly because the cramped, abrupt turning motion all too clearly recalls the ramps of multi-floor parking garages.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Modern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image courtesy wirednewyork.com.

WEEKLY Ws: “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City” – Part 4

This is the last of our four-part series based on MoMA’s amazing little book of walking tours.  Thank you for joining us for the trip!

WHY: From “Modern Architecture in New York”

“One should not overlook the flavor of the fast-disappearing older structures which testify to the sophisticated, cosmopolitan and international atmosphere of Manhattan’s yesteryears…  The contrast of the old with the new, of century-old cast-iron facades with sparkling chrome, glass and steel, is part of the city’s drama and endless fascination.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Modern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

WHERE: Olivetti Showroom, 584 Fifth Avenue

“One of New York’s most striking shops, the Olivetti showroom is a particularly interesting example of Italian display design.  Extravagant and exuberant, its sensuous and imaginative use of expensive, exotic materials makes it one of the showplaces of Fifth Avenue…

Because Italian taste characteristically eschews understatement for the spectacular (even the handsome entrance door of Italian walnut is 17 feet high and of incredible craftsmanship) there is a disturbing lack of restraint in the intricately designed special details.  Arbitrarily shaped stands and tables of contrasting rich marbles, elaborate displays and self-conscious devices hamper the integration of the whole.  Although this calculated unconventionality often stretches creative imagination to the breaking point, the results are notable in a field marked by increasing standardization of design.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Modern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image courtesy Olivetti.

WHEN: Rockefeller Apartments, 17 West 54 Street, built 1936

“Built over twenty years ago, this apartment house still offers lessons in planning to many of the ‘luxury’ apartments of the postwar period…  This block-through structure, covering less than the maximum permissible site, is designed with a central garden court, which adds the rare amenities of light, air and respite from street noises to city living.  The whole structure is remarkably free from the stylish ornamental mannerisms that would mark it as ‘early modern’; its simple, straightforward detailing, although somewhat heavy, makes the building as pleasantly contemporary today as when it was first erected.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Modern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via bridgeandtunnelclub.com.

WHAT: The Museum of Modern Art, West 53 Street

“Although today’s taste has returned to more texture and contrast, in a pioneering sense the museum building is still effective architecture.  It is best understood if we realize that the architecture of that date was undergoing a necessary cleansing process to rid it of the superfluous elements of traditional design that had ceased to have meaning in terms of modern machine production.  If the insistence on this bare simplicity was overstrict, it succeeded in its purpose of re-establishing sensitivity to the important basic elements of architecture – the wall, the frame, the nature of materials, and the proper relationship of the essential parts to the whole.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Modern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via nyny100.com.

WHO: Columbia University, owner, and John D. Rockefeller, developer, Rockefeller Center

“The style of the limestone-sheathed buildings in the taste of the ‘20s, which was overwhelmingly concerned with the creation of a romantic effect of aspiring verticality emphasizing extreme height, rather than with a logical aesthetic reflection of steel-cage construction.  To this end, the structural steel columns are masked by heavy masonry piers, with additional nonstructural piers repeated between the windows.  However, because the buildings are singularly free from the mannered ‘modernistic’ ornament of the times, which generally remains subordinate to the architectural masses, these structures continue to please – both as individual buildings, and as part of an impressively designed and harmonious whole.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Modern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via pixmule.com.

WEEKLY Ws: “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City” – Part 3

THANK YOU Curbed NY for featuring our entries about this small-but-mighty book of iconic architecture.  This week we’re pleased to present part 3, “Tour No. 2: Fifth Avenue (43^rd to 53^rd)”.

From “Modern Architecture in New York”

“Manhattan’s ruthless grid of streets has enforced a certain monotony. But the breathtaking depth-in-perspective and the sheer cliffs of Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue that seem to march to infinity have been judged by visitors one of the great visual experiences of the New World.  And if the careless combination of new and old, the mélange of styles and incredible congestion have led to architectural chaos, it is a chaos that possesses undeniable vigor and fascination.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

WHERE: 42nd Street Area, looking south from 45th Street and Third Avenue

“Within these few blocks are several of New York’s most striking skyscraper towers.  Spanning four decades of construction, they offer and unusual opportunity to trace a considerable part of the history of skyscraper design.  The Chrysler Building, completed in 1929, sought to emphasize the extreme height of its 77 stories through the invention of picturesque detail; its ‘modernistically’ styled spire, heroic, streamlined stainless-steel gargoyles high above the city, and intricate corner treatment represent a completely romantic approach to the design of an important new architectural form…  The Daily News Building, finished in 1930, a year after the Chrysler Building, is a more rational interpretation of the tall building, using the strongly repeated rising lines of white brick piers to create the impression of an insistent, almost brutal verticality…  The Chrysler Building Annex, constructed twenty-seven years after the original tower, demonstrates a kind of impasse in skyscraper design.  There is no searching for a dominant design theme, nor is there any attempt to advance the technology of the curtain-wall construction…  The Socony Mobil Building of 1956, while it recalls a Beaux-Arts formula in its massing, takes an important step forward in the employment of prefabricated stainless steel panels for its outer walls, and provides an interesting contrast to the Chrysler Building’s earlier use of the same material.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via Google.

WHEN: 1934: 211 East 48 Street by William Lescaze.

“This is probably the first modern townhouse built in the United States.  The architect, originally Swiss, brought his enthusiasm for the modern from Europe, where it was already a well-established style.  This house a startling addition ot the local scene at the time that it was completed in the ‘30s, introduced some of the more striking characteristics of modern architecture to New York – the elimination of familiar ornament and the classic façade divisions in favor of a carefully but unconventionally proportioned, smooth-surfaced exterior….  Although some of the entrance details now seem dated – such as the proportion and placement of the small, projecting marquee – and glass bock has gone out of favor after becoming an abused ‘modernistic’ cliché, the effect of the building is still extraordinarily contemporary…”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via gothamist.com.

WHAT: The Guest House, 242 East 52 Street, by Phillip Johnson, 1950

“This sophisticated town house, remodeled from an old stable, retains little of its original structure except for party walls.  Actually, it is a new and completely contemporary building – a handsome, unconventional house designed within the limitations of the conventional city lot.  The exterior façade is formal and closed, the symmetrical arrangement of its structural elements handled with a classic, geometric simplicity.  Unlike earlier modern houses… which were instantly radical, cubistic compositions in stark white stucco, the materials of this house – brick, glass and exposed steel – are familiar and urban.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via David Cobb Craig.

WHO: Oscar Niemeyer, Age 104, Member of the board of architects for the United Nations

“The remarkable interior space of the 75-ft.-high North Lobby is impaired by a conflict of many vacillating, unrelated ideas.  Among these disparate elements are the functional rationalism of an uncovered structural ceiling, the romanticism of curved, flying balconies reached by a geometric ramp supported on a self-consciously exposed arched steel beam, and a theatrically decorative facing wall with vertical panels of photo-sensitive patterned glass and gilded air-conditioning ducts.  The completed group of buildings, however, does succeed in suggesting one of the most important potentials of modern architecture: the effective juxtaposition of abstract, three-dimensional forms – here a horizontal, organic shape and a geometric, vertical slab – in a composition of unique dramatic contrast.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image courtesy un.org.

WEEKLY Ws: “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City” – Part 2

We recently came across a four-inch-by-six-inch paperback, just 76 pages long, hidden on a shelf of travel books.  It’s a collection of walking tours devoted to Modern Architecture compiled by the Municipal Art Society of New York and The Museum of Modern Art.  The book’s timeless suggestions are as interesting today as they were when the book was first published in 1961.  This week we’ll share some excerpts from “Tour No. 3: Third Avenue (East 50s, 40s and United Nations).”

WHY: From “Modern Architecture in New York”

“The visitor to New York, arriving with a preconceived picture of the best-publicized metropolis in the world, will find a city that is at once totally familiar and totally strange.  Photographs will have led him to expect the towering skyscrapers, the canyonlike streets, the cliffs of concrete and steel; widely published postwar building have added to this the image of shimmering towers of metal and glass.  No picture, however, has prepared him adequately for the city’s unparalleled concentration of building.  The sheer massing of monumental construction, consisting of the largest possible building on the individual site, has made New York a city in which architecture is an insistent and overwhelming factor.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

WHERE: Bonnier’s Inc.

“Still one of New York’s best-designed shops, Bonnier’s gains it particular effect from a two-story-high glass façade, through which can be seen the main selling floor and the setback balcony of the second floor, above.  This arrangement of façade and interior facilitates the use of attractive window displays of dramatic verticality.  Attention to architectural detail, as in the carefully studied divisions of the storefront and its well-designed lettering, the brick end wall carried through from exterior to interior, and the striking balcony and open stair, are pleasingly in character with the superior Scandinavian crafts and furnishings that the store promotes and sells.”

- “Four Walking Tours of Modern Architecture in New York City,” The Museum of Moern Art and the Municipal Art Society of New York, Prepared by Ada Louise Huxtable; Distributed by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Third Printing 1966.

Image via Google.