Lever House

Lever House, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and located at 390 Park Avenue in New York City, is the quintessential and seminal glass box International Style skyscraper. It is the pioneer curtain wall skyscraper in New York City. The 92 meters tall building features an innovative courtyard and public space. Most of the headquarters of the corporations on and around Park Avenue adopted this style of building.

Lever House, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and located at 390 Park Avenue in New York City, is the quintessential and seminal glass box International Style skyscraper. It is the pioneer curtain wall skyscraper in New York City. The 92 meters tall building features an innovative courtyard and public space. Most of the headquarters of the corporations on and around Park Avenue adopted this style of building. In 1963 it was copied as the (German) in the German city of Essen.

History

The Lever House was built in 1951-1952 to be the American headquarters of the British soap company Lever Brothers.

It was the pet project of Lever Brothers president Charles Luckman, who had been identified on the cover of Time Magazine as a Boy Wonder. Luckman would leave the company before the building's completion to achieve a notable architecture career on his own, including the design of Madison Square Garden, the Theme Building and master plan for Los Angeles International Airport, Aon Center and initial buildings of the Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center.

The building featured a glimmering 24-story blue-green heat-resistant glass and stainless steel curtain-wall. The curtain-wall was designed to reduce the cost of operating and maintaining the property. Its curtain-wall is completely sealed with no operating windows. This meant that much less dirt from the city would get into the building. The heat resistant nature of the glass also helped to keep air conditioning costs down. Additionally, the property featured a roof-top window-washing gondola that moved about the parapet wall on tracks.

The ground floor contained no tenants. Instead, it featured an open plaza with garden and pedestrian walkways. Only a small portion of the ground floor was enclosed in glass and marble. The ground floor featured space for displays and waiting visitors, a demonstration kitchen and an auditorium. The second and largest floor contained the employees' lounge, medical suite, and general office facilities. On the third floor was the employees' cafeteria and terrace. The offices of Lever Brothers and its subsidiaries occupied the remaining floors with the executive penthouse on the 21st floor. The top three stories contained most of the property's mechanical space.

Decline

In 1982, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Lever House as an official landmark. By that time, however, much of Lever House's original brilliance had been dimmed by time. The building's blue-green glass facade deteriorated due to harsh weather conditions and the limitations of the original fabrication and materials. Water seeped behind the stainless steel mullions causing the carbon steel within (and around) the glazing pockets to rust and expand. This corrosion bowed the horizontal mullions and broke most of the spandrel glass panels. By the mid-1990s, only one percent of the original glass remained leaving the once glimmering curtain wall a patchwork of mismatched greenish glass.

In September 1997, Unilever, Lever Brothers' parent, announced it was moving its Lever Brothers division to Greenwich, CT. Following the announcement, Lever Brothers slowly began vacating the building, eventually leaving only Unilever on the top four floors.

Restoration

In 1998 the property was acquired from Unilever by German-American real estate magnates Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs. Rosen's firm, RFR Holding LLC, negotiated a lease-back deal allowing Unilever to remain on the top four floors. Immediately following the acquisition, RFR Holding announced a $25 million capital improvement program including a restoration of the building's curtain wall and public spaces as well as repositioning it as a multi-tenant property.

The deteriorated steel subframe was replaced with concealed aluminum glazing channels, a state-of-the-art solution in modern curtain wall technology, which is identical to the original in appearance. All rusted mullions and caps were replaced with new and identical stainless steel mullions and caps. All glass was removed for new panes that are nearly identical to the original, yet meet today's energy codes.

The renovation project included the addition of marble benches and an Isamu Noguchi sculpture garden to the building's plaza--elements in the original plans for Lever House but never realized. In 2003, Lever House Restaurant became the first business to operate as a restaurant at Lever House and later won New York Magazine's Best Service award in 2004. Lever House Restaurant closed in early 2009. As of October 2009, restaurant Casa Lever occupies the former Lever House Restaurant space.

As of 2005, the building's tenants included Alcoa and Thomas Weisel Partners LLC which maintains a trading floor on the second floor of the building. And what was once the building's cafeteria and kitchen is now the headquarters of RFR Holding LLC, the property's new owner.

Public art space

Since the completion of the Lever House renovation, the building's plaza and lobby have been used as a gallery for the Lever House Art Collection. Exhibitions have included such works as "Virgin Mother" by Damien Hirst, "Bride Fight" by E.V. Day, "The Hulks" by Jeff Koons as well as several sculptures by Keith Haring. Tom Sachs' Bronze Collection was exhibited in May 2008; the Hello Kitty and Miffy sculptures are still on display in the Lever House plaza.

Exhibitions

Bibliography

  • Judith Dupré: Skyscrapers – A History of the World's Most Extraordinary Buildings. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, New York 1996, ISBN 1579127878
  • Dirk Stichweh: New York Skyscrapers. Prestel Publishing, Munich 2009, ISBN 3791340549

References

External links

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jessica m. hintermeister
23 August 2011
check out David LaChapelle "From Darkness to Light" before it closes on 9/2! lever house always puts up incredible installations so u should definitely make a point to wander over here 2/3x a year
Jeffrey Zeldman
20 August 2012
Quintessential Miesian International Style glass box skyscraper. Gordon Bunshaft & Natalie de Blois, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, 1952. NYC's first curtain wall skyscraper.
IWalked Audio Tours
16 June 2013
Built as American HQ for British soap company Lever Brothers. Lever Brothers president Charles Luckman wanted a “sparkling” design that would align with company’s image. Full site history via
MoMA
17 June 2013
Lever House is a MoMA: Landmarks of Modern Architecture Scavenger Hunt location! Show your checkin at MoMA (6/17-7/31) to receive $5 off 1 regular admission ticket! http://bit.ly/13Acm3l
Rebecca Brown
14 July 2013
Built in 1952 and designed by Architect, Gordon Bunshaft. Height is 307 ft (94m). Fact; It was the 2nd curtain wall skyscraper of New York City.
HUGO BOSS
3 November 2010
This iconic office building hosts regular, long-term exhibitions by major contemporary artists in its lobby, thanks to the largess of collector and real-estate mogul Aby Rosen. (via ARTINFO)
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