The Architecture and Development of New York City with Andrew S. Dolkart Close
Key Figures Commercial Architecture
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Marcel Lajos Breuer (1902–81)
Marcel Lajos Breuer was born and educated in Hungary. Between 1920 and 1928 he was first a student and then a master at the Bauhaus furniture-design workshop. It was there that Breuer designed his first tubular steel chair. In 1935 Breuer followed Walter Gropius to England and two years later to Harvard. By the late 1940s Breuer had relocated to New York City, but his one local building, the Whitney Museum of American Art, was not built until 1963–66. Breuer was among the most influential designers of modern suburban homes, most in areas close to New York.
Gordon Bunshaft (1909–90)
Buffalo, N.Y.–born Gordon Bunshaft joined the firm of Skidmore and Owings after studying at MIT. In 1946 he became a partner at what had then become Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. Bunshaft's first major building was Lever House (1950–52), on Park Avenue, which introduced the international style to New York corporate office design. The success of this building led to commissions for other modern corporate buildings, notably the Manufacturer's Trust Bank (1953–54) on Fifth Avenue and Forty-third Street, the Chase Manhattan Bank (1955–62) in Lower Manhattan, and the former Pepsi-Cola Building (1958–60) at 500 Park Avenue. The success of Lever House and the Chase Bank Building influenced the 1962 revision of the zoning law that sought to codify the idea of office towers set on plazas. Bunshaft was also a pioneer in the design of suburban headquarters complexes, notably with his design for the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company Building (1954–57) in Bloomfield, Connecticut.
Daniel Burnham (1846–1912)
Daniel Burnham's Chicago architectural firm was responsible for the design of buildings and urban planning schemes across America. Burnham's office became closely associated with the development of the skyscraper, especially in Chicago and other Midwestern cities. In New York City his major work is the Flatiron Building (1901–03), which became a romantic symbol of New York. Burnham was a proponent of city-beautiful planning, evident at the layout of the World's Columbia Exposition in 1893; his plans for Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other cities; and his design for Washington's Union Station (1903–07).
Carrère and Hastings
John Carrère (1858–1911) and Thomas Hastings (1860–1929) both studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and worked in the office of McKim, Mead, and White before establishing their own partnership in 1885. The firm was successful in the 1880s and early 1890s, but rose to national prominence by winning the competition for the New York Public Library in 1897. This is one of the most remarkable French-inspired Beaux-Arts public buildings in the country. The firm designed many superb city and country houses and public buildings. Although they designed a few early tall buildings, the partners were ambivalent about the skyscraper. The office's major skyscrapers were not designed until the late 1910s and early 1920s when, in association with other architects, the office worked on the Cunard Building (1917–21) and the Standard Oil Building (1920–28), which stand across the street from each other on Broadway at Bowling Green.
Irwin Chanin (1892–2004)
Builder and architect Irwin Chanin was responsible for several of the most important buildings erected in New York during the 1920s and early 1930s. Born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Chanin studied architecture and engineering at Cooper Union. Chanin began his career as a builder in 1919 with the construction of two modest homes in Brooklyn. In 1924 he built the Fur Center Building, his first structure in Manhattan. Also in that year he began construction on the first of five Broadway theaters that he would build—the Mansfield (now the Brooks Atkinson) on West Forty-seventh Street. His other four theaters were the Royale, the Majestic, the Masque (now the Golden), and the Biltmore. In 1925 Chanin visited the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris and was inspired by the decorative forms he observed. In 1927 he incorporated the new art-deco motifs in the lobby and dining room (now altered) of his Hotel Lincoln (now the Milford Plaza Hotel) on Eighth Avenue. In 1927–29 he built the Chanin Building on the southwest corner of Forty-second Street and Lexington Avenue, one of the first art-deco skyscrapers. At the time, Chanin was not a registered architect; thus, the firm of Sloan and Robertson designed the building. In 1930 Chanin was registered and became responsible for the design of two of the great twin-towered art-deco apartment buildings on Central Park West—the Century (1930–31) between Sixty-second and Sixty-third streets and the Majestic (1930) on Seventy-second Street.
Ernest Graham and Associates
Ernest Graham (1866–1936) became the partner of prominent Chicago architect Daniel Burnham in 1900 and, after Burnham's death in 1912, organized the successor firm of Ernest Graham and Associates (later Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White). Although most of the firm's work was in the Midwest, they designed buildings from coast to coast. Graham's most important New York work is the Equitable Building (1913–15) on Broadway between Pine and Cedar streets.
Hugh Ferriss (1889–1962)
Hugh Ferriss was the most prominent architectural delineator in America between the 1920s and 1950s. He not only prepared drawings for many of the most important buildings of the time and for many of the most prominent architects in America, but he also created a series of influential visionary drawings celebrating architecture, the skyscraper form, and the contemporary city.
Ernest Flagg (1857–1947)
Ernest Flagg studied architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts and was one of the few Americans who returned from Paris with an interest in and understanding of French architectural theory. Flagg's practice was limited, in part by his obnoxious personality, but he had a few loyal clients (including several relatives) and designed some of the most important residential, institutional, and commercial buildings at the turn of the twentieth century in New York. He designed homes and stores for the Scribner book-publishing family (his wife was a Scribner) and was a favorite architect of the Clark family, which was involved with the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Flagg's most famous building was the Singer Tower (1908) on Broadway (now demolished), carefully planned to be the world's tallest building. Flagg was also involved in tenement reform and designed a series of model apartment houses and single-family dwellings.
Bradford Gilbert (1853–1911)
Bradford Gilbert, the son of a civil engineer, served his architectural apprenticeship in the office of J. C. Cady. After working as an architect for railroad companies, he opened an office in New York in about 1882. Gilbert had a diverse practice, but is best known for his 1888 design of the Tower Building on Broadway, the first skyscraper to incorporate a steel-skeleton frame.
Cass Gilbert (1859–1934)
Cass Gilbert moved to New York in 1899 after a successful career in St. Paul, Minnesota, that included the design of the Minnesota State Capital. His earliest building in New York was the Broadway-Chambers Building (1899–1900), a skyscraper with significant polychromatic terra-cotta, which still stands on the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street. Gilbert designed several other major skyscrapers, including two major buildings clad in Gothic-inspired terra-cotta, the West Street Building (1905–07; seriously damaged by the collapse of the World Trade Center towers) and the Woolworth Building (1910–13). For many years the Woolworth was the world's tallest building and remains one of the most prominent features on the city's skyline. Gilbert also designed one of the city's great Beaux-Arts public buildings, the U.S. Custom House at Bowling Green (1899–1907), characterized by its ornate sculptural exterior. Both the Custom House and the Woolworth Building retain their sumptuous interiors.
Norman Foster (b. 1935)
The Hearst Building on Eighth Avenue between Fifty-sixth and Fifty-seventh streets, now under construction, will be Sir Norman Foster's first building in New York City. Foster studied architecture at Manchester University and at Yale. In 1963 he established a partnership with Richard Rogers, and in 1967 founded Foster Associates (now Foster and Partners). From his main office in London, Foster has designed buildings throughout the world. Recent projects include a new city hall for London, a rocketlike tower in the city's midst. The London tower and the Hearst Building will have glass façades with a visible structural framework of metal triangles. The Hearst Building will rise above Joseph Urban's landmark building of 1927–28, which was planned as the base for a tower that has never been built.
Walter Gropius (1883–1969)
Architect, theorist, and teacher, Walter Gropius was one of the pioneers in the development of modernism in Germany, in his design for the Fagus Works (1911–12) in Alfeld, Germany, and other early buildings and, most significantly, as a founder of the Bauhaus, where ideas about modern design were codified. After the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis, Gropius moved first to England and then, in 1937, to the United States to teach at Harvard, where he helped change the curriculum from Beaux-Arts to modern.
Raymond Mathewson Hood (1881–1934)
Although Raymond Mathewson Hood had a conservative architectural training at MIT, in the office of Cram, Goodhue, and Ferguson and at the École des Beaux-Arts he was responsible for some of the most forward-looking skyscrapers erected in New York during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1922 Hood won the competition for the Chicago Tribune Building. That year he also received a commission for his first major work in New York—the American Radiator Building, a black brick skyscraper with gold trim on Fortieth Street opposite Bryant Park. During the next few years, Hood designed the Daily News Building (1930) on East Forty-second Street and the McGraw-Hill Building (1931) on West Forty-second Street, both of which illustrate Hood's interest in European modernism. His most prominent design was for Rockefeller Center (1930–33), where he was the leading figure among Associated Architects.
Richard Morris Hunt (1827–95)
Richard Morris Hunt was the first American to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and, after his return to New York, he became the most prominent architect in the city. Early in his career Hunt designed a series of avant-garde buildings, introducing French architectural ideas to America. These include the Stuyvesant (1870–73; now demolished), the earliest apartment house planned for the middle class; the Roosevelt Building (1873–74), a cast-iron building with a clearly expressed structure; and the Tribune Building (1873–76; now demolished), an early skyscraper that was the third office building in the city that incorporated an elevator. In 1882 Hunt designed William K. Vanderbilt's mansion on Fifth Avenue at Fifty-second Street, an early example of a mansion designed in direct reference to European historical precedents. He later designed many city mansions and country estates for the Vanderbilts and other wealthy New Yorkers. While many of his homes in Newport and similar summer colonies are extant, few of his city buildings still stand.
Philip Cortelyou Johnson (1906–)
Philip Cortelyou Johnson was born in Cleveland and educated at Harvard. He was one of the first Americans to seriously study the development of European modern architecture and was one of the curators of the Museum of Modern Art's highly influential 1932 Modern Architecture exhibition. He was also coauthor, with Henry-Russell Hitchcock, of the book The International Style. In his early career, Johnson was strongly influenced by the work of Mies van der Rohe. This is evident at Johnson's famous Glass House (1949) in New Canaan, Connecticut, and at his Rockefeller Guest House (1949–50) at 242 East Fifty-second Street. In 1955 he became Mies van der Rohe's associate at the Seagram Building (1954–58), where he primarily designed interiors, notably that of the Four Seasons Restaurant. Noteworthy later buildings in New York City include the New York State Theater and the fountain and plaza at Lincoln Center (1965); the apartment house façade at 1001 Fifth Avenue (1978–1980), an early example of postmodern design; and the AT&T Building (now the Sony Building) on Madison Avenue (1980–83), the latter two in association with architect John Burgee.
Francis Hatch Kimball (1845–1919)
Francis Hatch Kimball worked in the Boston architectural office of Louis Rogers, later Gridley and Rogers, supervising the firm's projects in Hartford, Connecticut. While in Hartford, Kimball was appointed supervising architect for the construction of Trinity College, which was designed by English architect William Burges. As a result, Kimball went to London and worked in Burges's office for a year. Kimball also began receiving independent commissions in Hartford. His success led him to relocate to New York in 1879. Kimball became increasingly successful in New York, receiving commissions for office buildings, churches, clubs, theaters, houses, and other buildings. Kimball was one of the first architects in New York to design a significant number of skyscrapers, and these tall buildings increasingly became central to his work. His earliest skyscraper is the Corbin Building (1888) on John Street, succeeded by the Empire Building (1897–98), the Trinity and U.S. Realty buildings (1904–07), and others. Kimball was also a pioneer in the use of ornamental terra-cotta, evident on the Corbin Building, the sophisticated row of Queen Anne houses that he designed in 1885 at 133-143 West 122nd Street, and on the Montauk Club in Park Slope, Brooklyn (1889–91).
Yasuo Matsui (1883–1956)
Born in Japan, Yasuo Matsui studied at MIT and Berkeley before moving to New York, where he was a draftsman in several prominent architectural offices. He was consulting architect on several important projects during the 1920s and 1930s, including the Manhattan Company Building (1929–30, with H. Craig Severance) and the Starrett-Lehigh Building (1930–31, with Cory and Cory).
McKim, Mead, and White
Charles McKim (1847–1909), William Rutherford Mead (1846–1928), and Stanford White (1853–1906) established their partnership in 1879 and soon became the most prestigious architectural firm in the United States, designing a wide array of residential, institutional, commercial, and public buildings in New York and other cities. None of the founding partners were advocates of the skyscraper, but younger partners in the office proposed several tall buildings. The most important skyscraper designed by the firm is the Municipal Building (1907–14) on Centre Street at Chambers Street. This prominently sited classical-revival building, dating from 1907–14, was commissioned to house city offices.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969)
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe had an active practice in Germany before the Nazis came to power and was one of the leading figures at the Bauhaus design school. While in Germany, Mies van der Rohe designed such seminal modern buildings as the Tugenghat House (1928–30) in Brno, Czech Republic, and the Barcelona Pavilion (1929). In the late 1930s Mies van der Rohe came to America and became director of the architecture department at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and also designed its campus in Chicago (1942–50). Other projects in the Chicago area included the Farnsworth House (1945–50) and the Lake Shore Drive Apartments (1948–51). Mies van der Rohe designed only one building in New York, the masterful Seagram Building (1954–58) on Park Avenue. Mies van der Rohe was hired for this project by historian and architect Phyllis Lambert and worked on it with the young designer Philip Johnson.
Cesar Pelli (b. 1926)
Cesar Pelli is one of several prominent architects who trained in the office of Eero Saarinen. Pelli specializes in the design of large buildings that exploit the properties of glass. This is evident in his four towers at the World Financial Center, dating from the mid-1980s, which are transformed, as they rise, from solid stone to sparkling glass. For this project, Pelli also designed the glass Winter Garden. Pelli works in other materials besides glass, as is evident in his slender brick Carnegie Hall Tower (1986–90), which abstracts design elements from neighboring Carnegie Hall.
Renzo Piano (b. 1937)
Born in Genoa, Italy, where he maintains his main design office, Renzo Piano has become a designer of international renown. In 1971, after studying at the school of architecture in Milan and traveling extensively, Piano established a partnership with British architect Richard Rogers. The design for the Centre Pompidou in Paris catapulted the firm into the top rank of international architects. Between 1977 and 1990 Piano worked with Peter Rice and in 1990 founded the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Piano's office is working on three major New York City projects—the expansion of the Morgan Library, the new tower for the New York Times to be erected on Eighth Avenue, and the master plan and new buildings for Columbia University's proposed Manhattanville campus.
Christian de Portzamparc (b. 1944)
Christian de Portzamparc was born in Casablanca, then a French colony, and studied architecture in Paris. He has designed a diverse array of buildings, primarily in France. His most notable French work is the City of Music and the National Conservatory of Music and Dance, both at La Villette in Paris. Portzamparc's only building in New York is the multifaceted, glass office building on East Fifty-seventh Street between Fifth and Madison avenues commissioned by the luxury goods firm LVMH (Moët Hennessy-Luis Vuitton).
R. H. Robertson (1849–1919)
Robert Henderson Robertson was a prolific designer on residential, commercial, and institutional buildings in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Early in his career, Robertson worked with architect William Potter, but by 1881 had established his own office. Much of his early work reflects the influence of Henry Hobson Richardson's Romanesque-revival designs, evident, for example, at the Lincoln Building (1889–90) on Union Square a transitional skyscraper, incorporating an elevator and iron construction, but lacking a steel-skeleton frame. Robertson was one of the first architects to develop a practice that relied heavily on skyscraper commissions. Among his other extant skyscrapers are the American Tract Society Building (1894–95) and the Park Row Building (1896–99), once the world's tallest office building. In the 1890s and early twentieth century, Robertson's designs reflected the change in architectural taste toward building inspired by Renaissance and classical architecture.
Eliel Saarinen (1873–1950)
Eliel Saarinen had a successful practice in his native Finland before moving to Cranbrook, outside Detroit, in 1924. In 1922 Saarinen entered the competition for the Chicago Tribune Tower. His design, which adapted the setback requirements of New York's 1916 zoning code, came in second place. However, the design was widely published and it had a profound influence on skyscraper design in New York and elsewhere in America. Ralph Walker's Barclay-Vesey Building (1923–27), Irwin Chanin and Sloan and Robertson's Chanin Building (1927–29), and H. Douglas Ives and Sloan and Robertson's Fred French Building (1926–27) are but three examples of skyscrapers influenced by the massing of Saarinen's design.
Hugh Stubbins (b. 1912)
Boston-based architect Hugh Stubbins was born in Alabama and received his architectural education at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Harvard. Early in his career he worked with Walter Gropius. Stubbins has designed one major building in New York—the Citicorp Center on Lexington Avenue, which opened in 1978. As part of this project, Stubbins also designed a new home for St. Peter's Lutheran Church.
Louis Sullivan (1856–1924)
Chicago architect Louis Sullivan was one of the leading figures in the history of American architecture. Sullivan was an early proponent of the tall office building. His skyscrapers exemplify the Chicago notion of finding a new architectural vocabulary for this new type of building, rather than using the established architectural styles. Sullivan designed only one building in New York, the Bayard-Condict Building on Bleecker Street (1897–99). It is one of his major surviving structures, with its tripartite massing, terra-cotta façade, and stylized organic detail.
William Van Alen (1882–1954)
Although he was the architect of one of the most famous skyscrapers in New York, the Chrysler Building (1928–30), William Van Alen's life and career are not well documented. Van Alen studied at the Pratt Institute, in the office of row-house builder and designer Clarence True, at the Institute of Beaux-Arts Design in New York, and in the offices of Donn Barber and Clinton and Russell. In 1908 he won the Paris Prize and went to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Besides the Chrysler Building, Van Alen designed stylish shop fronts, a building for the Childs restaurant chain on Fifth Avenue, and a number of less-well-known skyscrapers.
Ralph Walker (1889–1973)
After studying at MIT and work in architectural offices around the country, Ralph Walker settled in New York in 1916 where he was employed at the firm of McKenzie, Voorhees, and Gmelin. In 1923 Walker was put in charge of the design of the new headquarters for the New York Telephone Company, known as the Barclay-Vesey Building. This is the earliest New York skyscraper that employed the requirements of the 1916 zoning code in an expressive manner. Walker's emphatically vertical design rises through a series of dramatic setbacks to a buttressed crown and is highlighted with a distinctive nontraditional, naturalistic ornamental vocabulary. In 1926 Walker became a partner in the firm of Voorhees, Gmelin, and Walker. He continued to design expressive skyscrapers, including those for Western Union (1928–30) on Hudson Street and AT&T's (1930–32) on Broadway. His career culminated with the design of the Irving Trust Building (1928–31) at 1 Wall Street, with its undulating façade, crystalline crown, and sumptuous public interiors.
Warren and Wetmore
Whitney Warren (1864–1943) and Charles Wetmore (1866–1941) first gained prominence as the designer of the New York Yacht Club (1899–1900) and for their work on Grand Central Terminal (1903–13, with Reed and Stem). In the early decades of the twentieth century, Warren and Wetmore received a succession of commissions for city and country houses from their wealthy friends and relatives. Beginning in 1910 the firm designed tall hotels in the area around Grand Central and became increasingly involved in the design of skyscrapers. The office designed some of the earliest skyscrapers erected in New York following the passage of the comprehensive zoning law of 1916. These included the Heckscher Building (1920–21) and the Aeolian Building (1925–27), both on Fifth Avenue, and the New York Central Building (1927–29) straddling Park Avenue north of Grand Central.
Samuel Yellin
Samuel Yellin (1885–1940) was America's master iron craftsman of the twentieth century. From his workshop in Philadelphia, Yellin created magnificent medieval- and Renaissance-inspired ironwork for buildings across the country. In New York, major installations of Yellin ironwork are evident at York and Sawyer's Central Savings Bank (1926–28) and at the Federal Reserve Bank (1919–24).
York and Sawyer
Edward York (1863–1928) and Philip Sawyer (1868–1949) had both trained in the office of McKim, Mead, and White. In 1898 York and Sawyer established their own firm, which became especially successful in the design of banks and hospitals. The firm's bank buildings are among the finest built in the United States in the early decades of the twentieth century. These palatial Renaissance and classical bank buildings express the interest that the directors of savings banks had in erecting buildings where working people could bank in splendor. Among the great banks designed by York and Sawyer are the Italian Renaissance–inspired Brooklyn Trust Company (1913–16) on the corner of Montague and Clinton streets in Brooklyn Heights and Central Savings Bank (1926–28) on Broadway and Seventy-third Street; the classical-revival–style Greenwich Savings Bank (1922–24) on Broadway and Thirty-sixth Street; and the Byzantine-inspired Bowery Savings Bank (1921–23) on East Forty-second Street. The firm's largest bank was that designed for the Federal Reserve (1919–24) on Maiden Lane. Each of these banks has a magnificent banking hall with a spectacular use of marble, stone, iron, and other materials.
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