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Lever House is a 307-foot-tall (94 m) office building at 390 Park Avenue in the Midtown East neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Constructed from 1950 to 1952, the building was designed by Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) in the International Style, a 20th-century modern architectural style. It was originally the headquarters of soap company Lever Brothers, a subsidiary of Unilever. Lever House was the second high-rise in New York City with a glass curtain wall, after the United Nations Secretariat Building.

Key Information

The building has 21 office stories topped by a triple-height mechanical section. At the ground story is a courtyard and public space, with the second story overhanging the plaza on a set of columns. The remaining stories are designed as a slab occupying the northern one-quarter of the site. The slab design was chosen because it conformed with the city's 1916 Zoning Resolution while avoiding the use of setbacks. There is about 260,000 square feet (24,000 m2) of interior space in Lever House, making it much smaller than comparable office buildings in Midtown Manhattan.

The construction of Lever House changed Park Avenue in Midtown from an avenue with masonry apartment buildings to one with International-style office buildings. Several other structures worldwide copied the building's design. Lever House was intended solely for Lever Brothers' use, and its small size had prompted proposals to redevelop the site with a larger skyscraper. The building was nearly demolished in the 1980s, when Fisher Brothers proposed a 40-story tower on the site; afterward, it was narrowly approved as a New York City designated landmark in 1982 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places the next year. In 1997, Unilever relocated most of its offices out of Lever House, and Aby Rosen's RFR Realty took over the building. After SOM renovated the building between 2000 and 2001, Lever House was used as a standard office building with multiple tenants. Brookfield Properties and WatermanClark obtained a majority ownership stake in the building in 2020 and hired SOM to conduct another renovation in the early 2020s.

Site

[edit]

Lever House is at 390 Park Avenue, on the western sidewalk between 53rd Street and 54th Street, in the Midtown East neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City.[4][5][3] The land lot has a frontage of 200 feet (61 m) on Park Avenue, 192 feet (59 m) on 54th Street, and 155 feet (47 m) on 53rd Street, giving the lot a slight L shape.[4][6][7] The lot has an area of 34,844 square feet (3,237.1 m2).[4][8] The Banco Santander building on 53rd Street abuts Lever House to the west,[9][10] and the DuMont Building and Hotel Elysée on 54th Street occupy the same city block. Other nearby buildings include 399 Park Avenue directly across Park Avenue to the east; the Seagram Building diagonally across Park Avenue and 53rd Street to the southeast; and the CBS Studio Building, Park Avenue Plaza, and Racquet and Tennis Club Building across 53rd Street to the south.[4] An entrance to the New York City Subway's Fifth Avenue/53rd Street station, served by the E and ​M trains, is less than a block west along 53rd Street.[11]

The site, which was part of Charles McEvers's farm in the early 19th century, had been developed by the 1870s with four- and five-story row houses.[12][13] By the late 19th century, the Park Avenue railroad line ran in an open cut in the middle of Park Avenue. The line was covered with the construction of Grand Central Terminal in the early 20th century, spurring development in the surrounding area, which was known as Terminal City.[14][15] The adjacent stretch of Park Avenue became a wealthy neighborhood with upscale apartments. Twenty-two rowhouses on 53rd and 54th Streets, owned by Robert Walton Goelet, formerly stood on Lever House's site.[12] Twenty of these were demolished in 1936 and replaced by the Art Deco Normandie Theater, as well as a one-story "taxpayer" building that was intended to preserve the site for future development. The two rowhouses at 62 and 64 East 54th Street remained standing.[12][13][16]

Architecture

[edit]

Lever House was designed by Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) in the International Style, a 20th-century modern architectural style.[17][18][19] Lever House, the Seagram Building, the former Union Carbide Building, and the Pepsi-Cola Building are considered part of a grouping of International Style structures developed on Park Avenue from 46th to 59th Street during the mid-20th century.[20] The building was constructed by main contractor George A. Fuller Company, with Jaros, Baum & Bolles as mechanical engineers and Weiskopf & Pickworth as structural engineers.[21][22] Raymond Loewy Associates designed the interiors,[21][22] since SOM had no interior design team when the building was completed in 1952.[23]

Lever House was built and named for the Lever Brothers Company, a soap company that was an American subsidiary of Unilever.[24] Lever House is 307 feet (94 m) tall[25] and has 21 usable office stories topped by a triple-height mechanical space.[25][26] The design largely incorporates ideas first proposed by Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the 1920s.[27] The building's glass-and-metal facade was similar to Mies's designs, while its raised-on-stilts courtyard was influenced by Le Corbusier's teachings.[28]

Form

[edit]
View along Park Avenue, showing the columns supporting Lever House
The columns on Park Avenue are set 10 feet (3.0 m) behind the lot boundary to avoid interfering with the walls of the Park Avenue railroad tunnel.[7][26]

The ground level of Lever House consists predominantly of an outdoor plaza, paved in light- and dark-colored terrazzo, with some indoor sections.[29] A rectangular planted garden with a pool is at the center of the plaza.[5] Lever House's plaza is legally a privately owned public space. To prevent adverse possession, wherein the city government takes over ownership of the plaza, the building's owners have closed the plaza to the public for one day every year since its completion.[30][31] Within the ground-story plaza are rectangular columns clad in stainless steel, which support the second story.[29][32] The columns, which extend to the underlying rock, are set 10 feet (3.0 m) behind the lot boundary to avoid interfering with the walls of the Park Avenue railroad tunnel.[7][26] The column layout gives the appearance that the upper stories are floating above ground[26][33] and resembles an architectural arcade.[34] The second story has an opening at its center, overlooking the planted garden;[29][35][36] the opening creates the impression of a courtyard.[32]

The third through twenty-first stories consist of a rectangular slab atop the northern portion of the site, occupying a quarter of the total lot area. The slab is only 53 feet (16 m) wide along Park Avenue,[7][37][38] allowing all offices to be within 25 feet (7.6 m) of a window and thereby providing large amounts of natural light to tenants.[39][40][41] Along 54th Street, the slab is 180 feet (55 m) wide[7] and is set back 40 feet (12 m) from the street.[42] The slab's positioning, with the shorter side along Park Avenue, allowed more natural light from the north and south facades[43] and permitted natural light to illuminate the buildings to the south.[42] This design also served a technical purpose, as it complied with the 1916 Zoning Resolution, intended to prevent new skyscrapers in New York City from overwhelming the streets with their sheer bulk.[3][38] As a result of the slab's small size, Lever House has a floor area ratio (FAR) of 6:1, compared to a FAR of 12:1 at Rockefeller Center and a FAR of 25:1 at the Empire State Building.[33]

The building's form was influenced by the 1916 Zoning Resolution, which required buildings to feature setbacks at progressively higher levels if the floor plates covered more than 25% of the land lot.[7][44][45] Conversely, buildings could rise without setbacks if their floor plates covered at most 25% of their site.[7][44][a] This theoretically allowed the construction of slab-like high-rises of unlimited height; in practice, Lever House was the city's first high-rise building to take advantage of this provision.[3][25][46] Previous skyscrapers developed under this zoning code had been developed with setbacks as they rose.[a] If all stories had contained the same area as the land lot, Lever House would have been equivalent to an eight-story structure.[7][38][40] While Rockefeller Center's buildings had somewhat similar slab-like designs, the vast majority of the city's previous skyscrapers had been designed to fill the maximum volume allowed under the 1916 Zoning Resolution.[41][48] Because Lever House is shorter than many other New York City skyscrapers, historian Carol Herselle Krinsky wrote that the building "barely qualifies as a skyscraper".[32]

Facade

[edit]
View of the curtain wall on the upper stories, with heat-absorbing glass panes as well as stainless steel
Upper stories

About 30% of the ground story is enclosed by glass and marble walls.[29][35] Three revolving doors lead to a ground-level lobby near the northern half of the lot. The elevators and an auditorium and display area on the same floor are within a black marble enclosure at the northwestern corner of the building.[5][33] At the lot's northwestern corner, a vehicular ramp from the western section of the 54th Street frontage leads to the basement garage and a loading dock.[33] A white marble enclosure with stainless steel doors encloses an emergency exit stair at the southeastern corner of the ground floor.[5]

Above the ground floor, all elevations of the facade contain a curtain wall with heat-absorbing glass panes and stainless steel.[49] The curtain wall, the second to be installed in New York City after that of the United Nations Secretariat Building,[50][51] was fabricated and installed by General Bronze, which had just completed the Secretariat Building's curtain wall.[49] Unlike at the Secretariat, where the narrower elevations were faced in solid material, all elevations of Lever House are faced in glass.[13][28][52] The curtain wall spans most of the facade but is interrupted at the building's northwestern corner,[45] where there is a service core with masonry cladding.[13][37]

Curtain wall

[edit]

The curtain wall contains vertical steel mullions, which are connected to the building's floor plates. Each pair of mullions is separated by glass window panes, which cannot be opened.[40][53][54] These consist of greenish panes for windows on each floor, as well as opaque bluish panels for spandrels between floors.[25][53] The spandrel panels are glazed, and black cinderblock walls behind the spandrels give them a dark hue.[55] They are separated from the window panes by horizontal mullions and muntin grilles.[22] When installed, the spandrel panels were intended to conceal the masonry construction of the superstructure.[40][55] The window panes are 7 feet 2 inches (2.18 m) tall, with the sill being 30 inches (760 mm) above the top of each floor plate, thereby concealing air-conditioning units beneath each window.[54] The mullions are nearly flush with the glass, projecting about 1 inch (25 mm) from the outer surface of the glass panels.[54] During nighttime, one of every five mullions is lit.[13][56] Venetian blinds were used to reduce glare.[39] During a renovation in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the curtain wall was moved forward by 1⁄4 inch (6.4 mm).[57]

The curtain wall was intended to reduce the cost of operating and maintaining the property and, as designed, was intended to filter out thirty percent of heat from sunlight.[35][36] The fixed-pane windows were cheaper to install and reduced the amount of particulate matter that entered the building, and they kept air conditioning costs down.[22][58][59] Additionally, Unilever commissioned a window-washing scaffold, suspended from a 10.5-short-ton (9.4-long-ton; 9.5 t) "power plant car" on the roof.[60][61][62] The first such device in the city,[63] it could move vertically along steel rails embedded in the mullions.[40][60][64] Kenneth M. Young of SOM designed the scaffold,[59] having searched in vain for existing machinery that he could adapt for the building.[55] Lever Brothers wanted the building to be "a symbol of everlasting cleanliness",[63] and, according to Curbed, the scaffold was used for a publicity stunt that "used Lever-brand Surf soap to scrub the windows clean".[65] Two window washers were hired to clean the facade every six days.[61][62][66] Each of the building's 1,404 windows could be cleaned within ninety seconds; because the window panes were fixed, they could be cleaned in less than one-third of the time it took to wash a sash window.[61]

The fixed-position window panes required that the building be air-conditioned, so steel grilles are also installed on the facade for ventilation intake.[56] The curtain wall cost $28,000 more compared to normal sash windows, while the double glazing cost $135,000 and the window-washing equipment cost $50,000. However, the air conditioning system saved $90,000 in upfront costs, and it also saved $3,600 per year on energy costs and $1,000 per year on costs caused by hot and cold air escaping. The fixed window panes also saved $2,000 a year on window-washing costs compared to sash windows.[67]

Structural features

[edit]
The ground-floor plaza of Lever House from the north
Ground-floor plaza

The internal superstructure consists of a skeleton of steel cellular beams,[58][68] with floor plates made of reinforced concrete.[26] Small sections of the floor plates outside the restrooms, elevator lobbies, and service core are supported by concrete arches.[58] The dropped ceilings on each story are about 9 feet (2.7 m) high. The floor-to-floor height, as measured between the floor plates of adjacent stories, is 12 feet 4 inches (3.76 m).[54] The west end of the slab is cantilevered 5 feet (1.5 m) from the furthest column while the east end is cantilevered 9 feet 8.5 inches (2.959 m).[69] Lever House's wind bracing system consists of transverse bents placed at intervals of 28 feet (8.5 m), with one set of columns through the interior of the slab.[7] The interior columns divide the office space asymmetrically into a wide bay and a narrower bay.[70]

The building's utilities run through the service core on the west side of the slab[35][36][37] and underneath each of the floor plates.[55] Six elevators are provided in the service core: five serving the office stories and one service elevator between the first and third floors.[58][68] A seventh elevator shaft was provided in the building to serve the upper stories if an additional elevator cab was deemed necessary.[68] The core was placed on the west end of the slab so that, if Lever Brothers had ever built a westward addition to the tower, the elevators could serve the addition.[52] An emergency stair was placed near the center of the building rather than in the core, thereby providing additional office space along the northern frontage of the building.[70]

Interior

[edit]

According to the New York City Department of City Planning, Lever House has a gross floor area of 262,945 square feet (24,428.4 m2).[4][b] All of the space was intended for Lever Brothers, which, in exchange for a more prominent structure, had been willing to forgo additional space that could have been rented to other tenants.[22][73][74] The lack of shops highlighted Lever's status as the building's only tenant;[23] as a Lever spokesperson said, "The fact is shops don't rent for much on Park Avenue. People buy on Fifth or Madison [Avenues]. All they do on Park is walk."[41][75] A further consideration was that Lever Brothers wished for the building to be a corporate symbol for itself, rather than being shared with other tenants.[26][43] In addition to its 21 usable stories and triple-height mechanical space, the building contained an employees' parking garage in the basement.[35][36]

Ground and second stories

[edit]

The enclosed section of the ground floor was largely oriented toward public use, with space for displays, a waiting room, a display kitchen, and an auditorium.[21][41][76] Within the lobby are glass display cases with steel edges, which originally showcased Lever Brothers' products.[77] Since 2003, the building's owner Aby Rosen has used the plaza and lobby as a gallery for the Lever House Art Collection.[78] Exhibitions have included such works as Virgin Mother by Damien Hirst,[79] Bride Fight by E.V. Day,[80] The Hulks by Jeff Koons,[81][82] The Snow Queen by Rachel Feinstein,[83][84] Robert Towne by Sarah Morris,[85][86] and several sculptures by Keith Haring[87] and Tom Sachs.[88][89] A 6,500-square-foot (600 m2) portion of the ground story was converted into a restaurant in 2003, with rounded walls, five dining niches, and a 22-seat private balcony.[10][90] As of 2023, the restaurant space is occupied by Casa Lever, whose design includes alcoves with black leather upholstery, black-and-white terrazzo floors, and banquette booths with wood frames.[91]

The second and largest floor contained fan, stock, mail, and stenography rooms, in addition to the employees' lounge and medical suite.[21][26][76] It contains 22,000 square feet (2,000 m2) of space.[52] The second floor has also been used for art installations, such as in 2018, when the second and ground floors were lit as part of Peter Halley's New York, New York.[92]

Above the southern three-quarters of the building was a third-story roof terrace clad with red tile, which was outfitted with shuffleboard courts for employees.[93] The terrace originally functioned as a roof garden,[55] adjoining an employee kitchen, dining room, and cafeteria inside.[21][76] In the early 2020s, the third-story terrace was integrated into Lever Club,[94][95] a 13,540-square-foot (1,258 m2) amenity area for the building's tenants.[96] The space was designed by Los Angeles–based architectural firm Marmol Radziner,[94][97] and is operated by Sant Ambroeus Hospitality Group as of 2023.[70][97] Lever Club is decorated with green marble walls and floors;[97] the space includes conference rooms, lounge seats, and a bar and restaurant.[97][98] White birch trees were planted on the terrace during the 2020s renovation.[70][99]

Office stories

[edit]

The offices of Unilever and its subsidiaries occupied the remaining floors, and there was an executive penthouse on the 21st floor.[21][35] Each of the upper stories within the slab contains 8,700 square feet (810 m2) of gross floor area.[52][69] The triple-story mechanical penthouse is atop the 21st floor and includes air conditioning machinery, elevator machinery and a water tower.[35][36][76]

On each story, about 6,000 square feet (560 m2) is used for office space, excluding area taken up by closets, elevators, restrooms, and walls.[69] At Lever House's completion, much of Lever Brothers' staff was female, so the offices were designed as spaces that "women would enjoy working in".[66][75] As such, the building used nine primary color schemes, and the floors, linoleum, desks, and acoustic-tile ceilings were colored gray-beige. Each of the executive offices had their own style, and four of these offices had fireplaces.[75] Gypsum partitions on each of the office floors were attached to the mullions.[68] The building was also constructed with air conditioning on each floor, an automatic fire alarm system, and a mail conveyor system.[21][76][100] During the building's 2020s renovation, the ceiling heights were increased, and the curtain wall was thinned, creating slightly more office space at the perimeter.[70]

History

[edit]

Unilever was formed in 1929 from the merger of British soap company Lever Brothers Limited and Dutch margarine firm Margarine Unie. Unilever's United States subsidiary was known as Lever Brothers Company and was initially headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[101][102] The subsidiary opened offices at 445 Park Avenue, three blocks north of the present building's site, in 1947.[103][104]

Development and early years

[edit]
The facade as seen from 54th Street. Most of the facade is made of green glass, but there is a masonry "spine" visible at center right.
54th Street facade, showing the masonry "spine" at center right

The company began acquiring land on Park Avenue from 53rd to 54th Street around June 1949, leasing the lots from Robert Walton Goelet's estate. The negotiations were made in secret, involving fourteen sets of lawyers, numerous brokers, and several shell companies.[105] As finalized, the lease was to run for sixty years.[8] The main broker behind the transaction, S. Dudley Nostrand, won the award for the "most ingenious and beneficial Manhattan real estate transaction of 1949" from the Title Guarantee and Trust Company.[106][107]

On October 5, 1949, Lever Brothers announced a wide-ranging expansion program within the United States.[108][109][110] The company's president, Charles Luckman, announced the executive offices would be moved from Cambridge to New York City that December, taking temporary space at two buildings in Manhattan. A new executive headquarters known as Lever House, to be built on Park Avenue from 53rd to 54th Street, was planned to the firm's subsidiaries upon its expected completion in late 1951.[109][110] SOM was hired to design Lever House when it was announced.[105] Luckman, who also held an architect's license, helped influence the design,[105] though he did not make any formal proposals.[32] Although SOM had prepared plans for slab-like buildings in Chicago for a Lever Brothers headquarters, the company decided upon a New York City headquarters because "the price one pays for soap is 89 percent advertising [...] and the advertising agencies of America were there."[32][52]

In designing Lever House, SOM focused on Lever Brothers' desire for 150,000 square feet (14,000 m2) of office space all to itself.[69] After months of deliberation, Bunshaft drew up plans for a slab occupying 25% of the site; to permit larger floor sizes, Lever Brothers bought an additional 3,300 square feet (310 m2) of land to the west.[42] Luckman left Lever Brothers in January 1950 because of unspecified disagreements with Unilever executives.[111][112] He went to design several buildings of his own,[113] initially prompting false speculation that Lever Brothers had fired him due to Lever House's design.[52] Final plans for Lever House were filed with the New York City Department of Buildings in April 1950.[114] The plans were publicized the same month.[35][115] Demolition of the four buildings on Lever House's site was scheduled to commence immediately after the plans were announced.[35] The George A. Fuller Company received the contract to construct Lever House in August.[116][117] A topping out ceremony for the steel frame occurred in April 1951.[118][119]

The building officially opened on April 29, 1952, with a tour and a ceremony attended by mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri.[100][120] Lever Brothers leased the building from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, taking over the responsibility of maintaining it.[8] The New York Times estimated that the promotional value of Lever House amounted to $1 million per year, substantially more than the estimated $200,000 annual loss due to the lack of retail shops. The building also had an average of 40,000 yearly visitors, many of whom were architecture students, and employee turnover was just over one-third of the average turnover for the city's other large companies.[121] In Lever House's early years, the enclosed ground-story space was used for art exhibitions.[41] These included the Sculptors Guild's annual exhibit[122] as well as an annual heliography exhibition.[123] Lever Brothers commissioned Robert Wiegand in 1970 to paint a 37-by-52-foot (11 by 16 m) mural, Leverage, along a wall adjacent to the third-story courtyard.[124][125]

Late 20th century

[edit]
Northward view along Park Avenue in 1973. Lever House can be seen on the left, in the distance.
The building in 1973, at left

Lever House's small floor–area ratio became a drawback for real estate developers in the years after its completion, even though that aspect remained popular among the public. The Lever Brothers Company rejected numerous rumors that the building would be replaced by a larger structure, even advertising the building's 25th anniversary in 1977 with a full-page New York Times ad.[126] At that time, Lever House had hosted more than 250 exhibitions.[127]

Proposed demolition and preservation

[edit]

Until the 1980s, relatively few preservationists were concerned about the demolition of curtain walls that had been completed between the 1950s and the 1970s.[128] Preservationists only started to express concern in 1982, after Fisher Brothers had signed a contract to purchase the fee position for the underlying land.[128][129][130] The firm wished to replace Lever House, as well as the neighboring Jofa Building on 53rd Street,[130][131] with a 40-story building[129] containing three times the floor area.[126][132] Lever Brothers rejected media reports that it was considering moving to New Jersey. Bunshaft said at the time that he never thought the building's small size would have resulted in its demolition.[132]

The plans prompted preservationists to request that the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) consider designating the building as a city landmark.[133][134] On November 9, 1982, the LPC designated Lever House as a landmark. LPC rules specified that New York City individual landmarks be at least 30 years old, making Lever House the city's youngest landmark at that time.[133][135][136] It was also the first time that the LPC had ever granted landmark status to a building that was exactly 30 years old.[134] Fisher Brothers opposed the landmark status.[129][132] The firm in charge of designing Fisher Brothers' proposed building, Swanke Hayden Connell Architects, prepared a white paper for the LPC, which described Lever House as "undistinguished and not worthy of preservation".[133] George Klein, who was in contract to buy the lease on the building itself from Metropolitan Life, favored landmark status.[129][132][133] At the time, Klein was trying to develop a structure on the Jofa Building site and incorporate Lever House into the new development.[133][135] Lever Brothers also supported the designation, but it had hired its own architectural firm, Welton Becket and Associates, to prepare plans for the Jofa site.[8][135][137]

The landmark status had to be ratified by the New York City Board of Estimate to become binding. If the landmark status was ratified, the building could not be demolished unless the landmark status caused significant economic hardship even with tax exemptions.[138] The Board of Estimate was to vote on the landmark designation in January 1982,[139][140] but this was delayed.[139] It was unknown whether the Board of Estimate had enough votes to uphold the building's landmark designation, since several board members had expressed their wish that the site be redeveloped more lucratively.[140][141] Among the reasons Fisher Brothers had cited in their attempt to replace Lever House was the structure's deteriorated condition.[8][129] Welton Becket and Associates estimated the cost of restoring Lever House at between $12 and 15 million.[8]

In February 1983, Fisher Brothers publicized plans for its 40-story tower, which they claimed would create 1,500 jobs and generate $9.4 million annually in taxes.[142][143] The same month, several hundred preservationists, such as architect Philip Johnson and former U.S. first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, protested in favor of ratifying Lever House's landmark designation.[137][144] Mayor Ed Koch, a member of the Board of Estimate, published a letter to the other board members in which he asked them to support designation.[144] The Board of Estimate ratified the landmark status that March.[138][145] The landmark status was approved with a slim 6–5 majority,[137][145] as all five of the city's borough presidents voted against the designation.[145] Lever House's preservation was described by The Christian Science Monitor as "sparking heated debate only in New York City" because, nationally, there was a trend in favor of preservation at the time.[146] Lever House was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 2, 1983.[1]

Building decay and ownership changes

[edit]
Lever House as seen in 2014. The main tower is to the right, while the building's three-story base occupies the foreground. Several other buildings are visible at left.
Seen in 2014

As a result of Lever House's relatively small floor area, the land lot had 315,000 square feet (29,300 m2) of unused development rights, which under New York City zoning code could be transferred to nearby buildings.[8][138] However, the LPC had not yet determined whether such a transfer would be applicable to Lever House.[8] Accordingly, the landmark designation caused an impasse between the Fisher Brothers, Klein, and Lever Brothers. Both developers' plans were based on full control of the building and land, as well as lease negotiations with Lever Brothers, whose lease was still active for another twenty-seven years.[8][147]

Lever Brothers sued the Fisher Brothers in June 1983, alleging the latter was still attempting to gain ownership of Lever House so it could be demolished, thereby breaking Lever Brothers' lease.[148] The Fisher Brothers relented that October, agreeing to sell its fee position to Klein.[149] Sarah Korein acquired the land under Lever House from the Goelet estate in 1985, though Unilever continued to lease the building.[150][151] Her daughter, Elysabeth Kleinhans, recalled that Korein referred to Lever House as her "Mona Lisa".[150]

Through the 1980s, the building's blue-green glass facade deteriorated due to weather and the limitations of the original fabrication and materials. Water seeped behind the vertical mullions, causing the carbon steel within and around the glazing pockets to rust and expand. This corrosion led to most of the spandrel glass panels breaking.[137][152] At least some of these structural failures were attributed to the relatively new technologies used at Lever House.[152] According to documents filed with the city government in 1995, forty to fifty percent of the original glass had been replaced;[137][153] many of these replacements took place without SOM's knowledge and were visibly different from the original panes.[154] Consulting engineer Vincent Stramandinoli proposed erecting a new glass curtain wall in front of the original curtain wall, which was planned to be removed.[137][153] In 1996, Unilever proposed replacing the curtain wall with an identical wall designed by David Childs of SOM.[137][152] Childs said at the time that only one percent of the original glass remained.[152] The LPC approved Childs's plan,[137] but the proposal was not further acted upon in 1999.[150]

Restoration and office tenancies

[edit]

RFR operation

[edit]

Unilever announced in September 1997 that it was moving its Lever Brothers division to Greenwich, Connecticut. Following the announcement, Lever Brothers slowly began vacating the building, leaving Unilever on only the top four floors.[150] At the time, Lever Brothers had been the building's only tenant.[150] Shortly before Korein's death in 1998,[155] real estate magnates Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs acquired the building lease, although Korein's family retained the land lease.[137][156] Under the agreement, Rosen's company RFR Holding was obliged to perform a comprehensive restoration of the facade. RFR negotiated a lease-back deal allowing Unilever to remain on the top four floors.[156] The Korein family remained the owner of the land.[157] RFR hired graphic designer Michael Bierut to expand the building's typeface, which previously had only included the seven unique letters in the name "Lever House".[158][159]

In 1999, RFR Holding announced that it planned to spend $25 million (equivalent to $47 million in 2024[160]) on capital improvements, including a restoration of the building's curtain wall and public spaces, designed by SOM.[159] Work began in 2000, at which point curtain wall specialist Gordon H. Smith estimated that the building only retained about a half-dozen of its original spandrel panels.[161] The deteriorated steel subframe and rusted mullions and caps were replaced.[57][159] New panes of 1⁄4-inch-thick (6.4 mm) vision glass were installed, which were nearly identical to the originals but met modern energy codes. The curtain wall was also moved 1⁄4 inch (6.4 mm) outward on all sides.[57] The curtain wall's design caused condensation to accumulate in the cracks of the curtain wall over the years.[77] The renovation also included the addition of marble benches, as well as a sculpture garden with works by Isamu Noguchi, to the building's plaza.[161] Ken Smith Landscape Architect had proposed revising one of Noguchi's two unbuilt designs for a sculpture garden, but the Noguchi Foundation had rejected the proposals, leading Smith to redesign the garden using eight of Noguchi's sculptures.[161] These elements had been part of the original plans for the building and were never realized.[162]

The renovation was completed by 2001.[163][164] Following the renovation, Lever House became a standard office building with multiple tenants. Metal processor Alcoa (later Arconic) signed a lease in 1999 for five stories in the building.[165] Other tenants included American General Financial Group, Cosmetics International, and investment bank Thomas Weisel Partners.[159] In 2003, Lever House Restaurant became the first restaurant to open at Lever House.[166][167] The windowless restaurant space, which was designed by Marc Newson, covered 6,500 square feet (600 m2) and was hidden behind the public plaza's western wall.[90][168] The restaurant closed in early 2009[169][170] and was replaced by Casa Lever, which opened later that year.[171][170]

In the early 2010s, the administration of mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed the Midtown East rezoning, which allowed the Korein estate to sell the unused development rights from Lever House for up to $75 million.[172] The rezoning was passed in 2016, enabling the Korein estate to sell the development rights.[151] At the same time, although RFR had an annual ground lease payment of $6 million, the company faced a steep increase to $20 million when the lease was scheduled to reset in 2023. Because of the ground lease, RFR had trouble refinancing Lever House.[173][174] By early 2018, RFR was three years behind on its rent payments and mortgage bondholders were looking to foreclose on the property, a move that could potentially cancel all of the building's office leases.[174] Bondholders initiated foreclosure proceedings that May.[174][175]

Brookfield and WatermanClark ownership

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View of the ground-floor privately owned public space under Lever House's base. The space includes a grid of floor tiles. The second floor of the building is held up by steel columns. Park Avenue is visible in the background.
View of the ground-floor privately owned public space under Lever House's base

A joint venture between Brookfield Properties and Waterman Interests (later WatermanClark) bought the ground lease from RFR in July 2018.[176] Brookfield and Waterman purchased RFR's debt load in early 2019 for $12.8 million (equivalent to $15.7 million in 2024[160]), a $68 million decrease from the debt's original value.[177] RFR filed two lawsuits against Brookfield and Waterman during late 2019. One was related to the lack of sprinklers in the building, in which RFR was threatened with lease termination,[178] while the other alleged that Waterman Interests had fraudulently taken over the ground lease using confidential information.[179][180] In May 2020, RFR gave a majority stake in Lever House's operation to Brookfield and WatermanClark.[181] The new owners decided to renovate Lever House, as all tenants had left during the COVID-19 pandemic.[182]

In July 2021, SOM proposed restoring the building's historic design elements, replacing non-historic features, and adding an entrance to Casa Lever from the ground story.[183] A lounge for tenants and visitors would be created on the third floor, and a new HVAC system would be installed.[98][182] Additionally, the architects planned to replace or clean the finishings and re-landscape Lever House's plaza.[98] The LPC approved the renovation plans in January 2022, and work started shortly afterward.[51][184] Workers replaced broken pieces of black limestone with slabs from a defunct quarry that had provided the building's original limestone, and they pumped dry air into the curtain wall to remove built-up condensation.[77][97] The Lever Club amenity space was built on the third floor, and mechanical equipment on the upper stories was upgraded.[70] The Casa Lever restaurant was also refurbished in early 2023 by the firm David Bucovy Architect,[91] reopening that June.[185][186] Casa Lever's renovation included the new entrance and the restoration of interior architectural features.[91] By November 2023, SOM had finished renovating Lever House.[70][97] Following the renovation, in early 2025, real estate firm CBRE Group leased six stories.[187][188]

Impact

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Reception

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Contemporary

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View of offices on the second floor, as seen from the building's courtyard
View from the building's courtyard

In 1950, before construction began, Architectural Forum described Lever House as "infinitely more spirited and dignified than any other commercial office building" in the city.[33][40] Upon its completion, the same journal wrote, "it is the shape of this building which is impressive, more even than the gleaming materials".[189] New York Times architectural critic Aline B. Louchheim wrote that Lever House was "beautiful as well as functional".[43][190] British art historian Nikolaus Pevsner told The New York Times shortly afterward, "The fact that such an extraordinary building was commissioned from a firm rather than an individual genius [...] is different from" continental Europe.[72][190] Architectural Record wrote of the plaza: "In this aspect, the entire structure is thoughtful, pleasant, and a decided advance over the average speculative building."[76][191] Fellow modernist architect Eero Saarinen said that Bunshaft "has created one of the finest buildings of our times".[192]

Although historian Carol Herselle Krinsky wrote that the building "received universal praise from architects, critics, and laymen" for its unusual style,[192] not all of the initial commentary was positive.[66] Luckman reflected in the Los Angeles Times that financiers had nicknamed it "Luckman's folly" during its construction,[193] while Louchheim found the interiors and the penthouse offices unappealing.[43] The architect Frank Lloyd Wright called Lever House a "box on sticks" in a 1952 speech at the Waldorf Astoria,[66][190][194] and Edward P. Morgan said the same year that "a 10-year-old boy could have done better with a Meccano set".[66][195]

Retrospective

[edit]

Commentary on the building was mixed.[66] A 1956 Architectural Record article deemed it the third most significant structure of the past hundred years, and in a poll of 500 architects two years later, Lever House was deemed one of the "seven wonders of American architecture".[196] In a 1957 article about architecture on Park Avenue, Ada Louise Huxtable wrote that "the staples of our civilization—soap, whiskey and chemicals" (in reference to Lever House, the Seagram Building, and the Union Carbide Building) were represented in the "monuments" then being developed on Park Avenue.[191][197] According to British art critic Reyner Banham in 1962, Lever House "gave architectural expression to an age just as the age was being born".[191][198] By contrast, architectural critic Lewis Mumford, writing for The New Yorker in 1958, found the slab "curiously transitory and ephemeral".[66][199] Henry Hope Reed Jr., in his 1959 book The Golden City, contrasted a picture of Lever House with one of the Postum Building at 250 Park Avenue, captioning Lever House only with the words "no comment".[152] Art historian Vincent Scully said in 1961 that Lever House interrupted the landscape of Park Avenue without regard to the existing architecture,[66][200] and other detractors noted the lack of benches in the courtyard.[201]

At the building's 25th anniversary in 1977, architectural critic Paul Goldberger wrote that Lever House had been "a stunning act of corporate philanthropy".[127] Architectural historian William H. Jordy thought Lever House was a paragon for buildings developed after World War II,[202][203] while Goldberger wrote in his 1979 book The City Observed that Lever House was as influential to architecture as the Daily News Building and 330 West 42nd Street had been.[202][204] Washington Post reporter Benjamin Forgey wrote in 1982 that the plaza was "dark and uninviting", though he thought the base and tower were well-proportioned and that the trees above the plaza helped beautify Park Avenue.[134] In 1988, Krinsky wrote that Lever House had given "the single greatest boost to SOM's reputation".[192] Architectural Record magazine described Lever House in 2000 as one of the United States' "most famous [architectural] works of the mid-20th century" that were protected as local or national landmarks.[205]

Following the building's early-2020s renovation, architectural critic Justin Davidson wrote that the modern structure "is a bracing illusion, a gorgeously appointed set."[77] A critic for The Architect's Newspaper said in 2023: "Lever House continues to benefit not only from good bones, but steadfast stewardship."[70] Conversely, Audrey Wachs wrote for Curbed in 2022 that Lever House had become less practical as an office building during the preceding years, existing mostly as a landmark.[206]

Architectural recognition

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In 1952, the year of Lever House's completion, Office Management and Equipment magazine awarded the building "Office of the Year".[207] The American Institute of Architects (AIA) gave the building an Honor Award the same year,[25][208] the first such award ever distributed by the organization.[192] Lever House also received the Fifth Avenue Association's award for "best New York building" constructed between 1952 and 1953.[209] The AIA further recognized Lever House in 1980 with a Twenty-five Year Award, celebrating the longevity of its design.[210][211] Yale School of Architecture professor Elihu Rubin told Time magazine in 2022, "There's probably hardly a survey course in American architecture that doesn't mention Lever House."[98]

Design influence

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According to the LPC, Lever House's design was widely seen by historians as a major advancement in the International Style.[202] Charles Jencks called Lever House's curtain wall a step in "penultimate development and acceptance" of the International Style.[202][212] Krinsky described the all-glass curtain wall as innovative for a high-rise, contrasting with the low-rise massing of the General Motors Technical Center or the partially-masonry facades of the Commonwealth or UN Secretariat buildings.[213] Robert Furneaux Jordan felt the building's court "set a precedent that may lift New York to a new level among world capitals".[202][214] Lever House, along with SOM's later Inland Steel Building in Chicago, also helped popularize post–World War II modernist architecture in the United States.[215]

Following Lever House's completion, several glass-wall skyscrapers such as the Seagram Building and 28 Liberty Street were built in New York City.[216] Similar structures were erected elsewhere,[217][218] many of which were of lower quality than the original.[154] Commercial buildings were developed on the adjacent blocks of Park Avenue,[219] and many of the residential structures on that street were replaced with largely commercial International Style skyscrapers during the 1950s and 1960s.[220][221] One of the Seagram Building's architects, Philip Johnson, cited Lever House specifically as a forebear to his structure.[222] The facade of the nearby 430 Park Avenue, which was remodeled in a style resembling Lever House's facade,[223] appeared in the opening credits of the 1959 film North by Northwest.[224]

Lever House's design was also copied internationally; as Nicholas Adams wrote in 2019, "Lever House had represented a clarion call for modernity, and it was widely imitated."[225] These structures included the Banco de Bogotá headquarters in Bogotá in 1960;[225] Ankara's Emek Business Center, Turkey's first curtain-walled skyscraper, in 1965;[225][226] the high-rise tower of Berlin's Europa-Center in 1965;[225][227] and the Hydroproject headquarters in Moscow in 1968.[228] Lever House's influence also spread to Scandinavia with Copenhagen's SAS Radisson, designed in 1960, as well as numerous consular offices in Germany, designed in the 1950s by SOM. According to Adams, the design was ultimately copied more than a dozen times around the world.[225]

See also

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References

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[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Lever House

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from Grokipedia
Lever House is a 21-story International Style office skyscraper located at 390 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, designed by Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and completed in 1952.[1][2] The building features a pioneering blue-green glass and stainless-steel curtain wall enveloping its slender tower, which rises above a low base structure supported by exposed columns, creating a publicly accessible plaza below.[1][3] This design represented a departure from traditional masonry skyscrapers, introducing lightweight, prefabricated cladding that maximized natural light and views while minimizing material use, and it was the second high-rise in New York City to employ such a curtain wall system after the United Nations Secretariat.[3][2] Originally headquarters for Lever Brothers Company, the structure's elevated tower and open ground level set a precedent for modernist urban planning by integrating public space into private development, influencing the redevelopment of Park Avenue from a canyon of stone facades into a corridor of glass towers.[1][4] Designated a New York City Landmark in 1982 amid concerns over potential alterations or demolition due to underutilized air rights, Lever House underwent significant restorations in the early 2000s and 2020s to preserve its original materials and innovations.[2][3] Its architectural significance lies in embodying postwar optimism and technological advancement, though the curtain wall's maintenance challenges highlighted practical limitations of early modernist experimentation with non-load-bearing facades.[1][4]

Location and Site

Site Characteristics and Urban Context

The site of Lever House is located on the west side of Park Avenue between East 53rd and East 54th Streets in Midtown Manhattan, occupying a plot of approximately 34,830 square feet with lot dimensions of 200.83 feet along Park Avenue by 192 feet in depth.[1][5] The irregular shape of the site features varying frontages—roughly 200 feet on Park Avenue, 155 feet on 53rd Street, and 192 feet on 54th Street—allowing for the building's setback design that creates publicly accessible open spaces around the structure.[6] In the early 1950s urban context, the site was situated amid a transitioning Park Avenue corridor north of Grand Central Terminal, where traditional masonry apartment buildings and low-rise structures predominated, reflecting the avenue's earlier residential character.[2] Lever House's development initiated a shift toward International Style office towers, setting a precedent for glass-clad high-rises that redefined the avenue's commercial landscape in the postwar era.[1][2] This transformation aligned with broader Midtown zoning allowances for setbacks and plazas, enabling denser yet open urban forms amid evolving corporate demands for modern headquarters.[2]

Pre-Development Site History

The site of Lever House, located on the west side of Park Avenue between 53rd and 54th Streets in Midtown Manhattan, originally formed part of Charles McEvers' farm in 1815, with his residence situated near Fifth Avenue and extending eastward to Fourth Avenue (later renamed Park Avenue).[2] In 1834, the New York and Harlem Railroad constructed tracks along Fourth Avenue from 42nd to 96th Streets, followed by the New Haven Railroad in 1848, which introduced significant noise and smoke that later prompted efforts to depress the tracks below street level.[2] By 1881, Fourth Avenue had been widened to 140 feet, with tracks placed underground south of 56th Street, and the avenue was officially renamed Park Avenue in 1888.[2] Urban development accelerated in the late 19th century, and by 1885, the block between 53rd and 54th Streets was fully occupied by four- and five-story rowhouses and masonry buildings typical of the area's residential character at the time.[2] The construction of Grand Central Terminal beginning in 1905 necessitated propping up adjacent buildings and laying new electrified tracks, further integrating the site into the expanding rail and urban infrastructure.[2] In 1936, approximately twenty rowhouses on the site were demolished to make way for low-rise commercial development, including an Art Deco-style building featuring "taxpayer" shops—single-story retail spaces along Park Avenue designed for quick income generation—and the Normandie Theatre, which fronted East 53rd Street and opened on October 15, 1938, as a neighborhood cinema.[2][7] These structures persisted until May 1950, when they were razed to clear the 34,830-square-foot lot (approximately 200 feet along Park Avenue by 155 feet along 53rd Street) for Lever House construction, with excavations commencing in August of that year.[2][1] The site's transformation reflected broader shifts in Midtown from rail-influenced residential blocks to commercial and office uses, accelerated by zoning changes and postwar redevelopment pressures.[2]

Architectural Design

Structural Form and Engineering

Lever House consists of two primary masses: a two-story horizontal base enclosing a public plaza and a 21-story vertical tower slab oriented perpendicular to Park Avenue, reaching a height of 307 feet.[1] The tower covers approximately 25% of the lot area, with no setbacks, allowing the structure to maximize open space at ground level while adhering to zoning requirements.[2] The building employs a conventional steel frame as its primary structural system, with moment connections between steel members to resist both gravity loads and lateral forces such as wind.[8] Reinforced concrete floors, supported by metal decking in a cellular configuration for integrated mechanical services, span between the frame elements.[2] Concrete shear cores provide additional stability against lateral loads; these are positioned centrally at the base but offset to one side within the narrower tower floors.[8] The curtain wall system integrates with the structure by hanging a grid of stainless steel mullions directly in front of the steel columns, effectively concealing the frame from view except at night when interior lighting reveals it.[2] This sealed facade, composed of heat-absorbing glass panels fixed in place without operable windows, relies on internal forced-air ventilation rather than natural airflow, an engineering choice that prioritized airtightness and reduced maintenance.[2] At the plaza level, steel columns recessed behind the facade support the elevated second-floor slab, creating an open courtyard that echoes the structural rhythm through paving patterns.[2] Exterior maintenance is facilitated by a gondola system mounted on a roof track for cleaning the non-operable glass surfaces.[2]

Facade System and Materials

The facade of Lever House features a curtain wall system, a non-structural outer skin hung in front of the building's steel frame, which masks the internal columns and provides a seamless glass enclosure.[2] This system, installed during construction from 1950 to 1952, consists of large panels of blue-green tinted glass framed by stainless steel mullions and spandrels.[1] The glass, selected for its heat-absorbing properties, reduces solar heat gain while allowing natural light penetration, marking an early advancement in glazing technology for high-rise buildings.[9] Stainless steel elements, polished for reflectivity, contribute to the facade's durability against corrosion and its sleek, modernist appearance.[1] The curtain wall spans the tower's 21 stories above the base, with vertical stainless steel mullions spaced approximately 6 feet apart and horizontal spandrels concealing floor slabs.[2] Each glass panel measures about 7 by 10 feet, fixed within the stainless steel framework using gaskets and clips rather than structural bonds, allowing for thermal expansion and simplifying maintenance.[9] This design was the second such installation in New York City, after the United Nations Headquarters, and represented a shift from masonry-clad skyscrapers to fully glazed envelopes that maximized transparency and minimized visual weight.[2] The blue-green tint, achieved through iron oxide in the glass composition, not only filters ultraviolet rays but also imparts a distinctive hue that varies with light conditions.[1] In the 2001 restoration led by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the original curtain wall was replaced with compatible materials, including heat-strengthened PPG Solex glass panes matching the original blue-green color and stainless steel mullions with concealed aluminum glazing channels for improved sealing and energy efficiency.[1] This intervention adhered to New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission guidelines, ensuring the facade's visual authenticity while addressing deterioration from decades of exposure, such as seal failures and glass cracking.[10] The updated system incorporates modern gaskets and anchors, yet retains the proportional grid and material palette of the 1952 design.[1]

Interior Layout and Features

The ground floor of Lever House features an open colonnaded space surrounding a planted courtyard, with approximately 30 percent of the area enclosed by glass panels to create a reception area and art gallery. Elevator banks and a small auditorium are situated at the rear of this level.[2] This design integrates the lobby directly with the public plaza, emphasizing transparency and accessibility characteristic of modernist principles.[2] The second floor, forming part of the horizontal slab extending over the courtyard, houses a dining room and lounge for employees. Above this base, a 53-foot-wide vertical slab contains 19 office floors originally fitted out for Lever Brothers Company operations, supporting around 1,200 employees across approximately 290,000 square feet of interior space.[2] The building comprises 24 stories in total, including three mechanical floors at the top.[2] Office interiors incorporate fixed green-tinted heat-absorbing glass windows and blue-green wired-glass spandrels, paired with stainless steel mullions forming an interior grid pattern. Forced air ventilation is provided via ducts and grilles beneath dropped ceilings, supporting efficient climate control in the sealed environment.[2] Floor-to-floor heights are low, typically resulting in about nine-foot ceilings, with continuous ribbon windows enhancing the horizontal emphasis of the spaces.[11] The steel frame and reinforced concrete floors enable flexible, open-plan configurations without internal load-bearing walls on the office levels.[2]

Development and Construction

Design Process and Key Figures

The design of Lever House was initiated in 1949 by Lever Brothers Company, seeking a new headquarters to project an image of modernity and cleanliness aligned with its soap products, such as Tide, amid post-World War II corporate expansion.[12] The client, under President Jervis J. Babb, required approximately 300,000 square feet of space for 1,200 employees on a $6 million budget, emphasizing functional efficiency without commercial tenants.[2][12] Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) was selected as architect, with Gordon Bunshaft serving as partner in charge and chief designer, drawing on the firm's experience in modernist projects.[2][13] Bunshaft, assisted by Natalie de Blois, developed the scheme to incorporate International Style principles, including a glass curtain wall for a "sparkling" aesthetic and Le Corbusier's five points of architecture—pilotis, free plan, ribbon windows, free facade, and roof garden—adapted to urban constraints.[12] Key decisions addressed New York City's 1916 and 1929 zoning laws, limiting lot coverage to 25 percent; the design positioned a slender 21-story vertical slab over a three-story base, creating an open courtyard plaza that occupied only about one-quarter of the site while providing setbacks for light and views.[2][12] Narrow floor plates, planned on a 4-foot-8-inch module, maximized natural illumination and city vistas, with mechanical ventilation enabling a fully sealed envelope.[12][14] Engineering contributions were critical: Weiskopf & Pickworth handled structural design, employing a steel frame with exposed columns to support the lightweight curtain wall, while Jaros, Baum & Bolles managed mechanical systems, including air conditioning for the enclosed facade.[12][14] Interior design by Raymond Loewy Associates complemented the exterior's minimalism.[14] Charles Luckman, an earlier Lever executive and architect, influenced the project's emphasis on corporate symbolism, though Babb oversaw its execution.[12] The process culminated in final plans by 1950, prioritizing volume over mass to symbolize Lever Brothers' progressive identity.[2]

Construction Timeline and Costs

Construction of Lever House began in 1950 after the demolition of pre-existing buildings on the site in May. Excavations for the foundation and structural elements commenced in August 1950, enabling rapid progress on the innovative steel frame and curtain wall system.[2] The building reached completion in early 1952, with the structure fully operational by April of that year. An official unveiling event took place on April 29, 1952, as documented in contemporary press coverage.[2][15] The total construction cost amounted to $6 million, reflecting the era's emphasis on efficient prefabrication and modernist materials despite the pioneering design features.[2] This figure, reported in the New York Journal American, underscores the project's role in demonstrating cost-effective scalability for glass-clad skyscrapers.[2][16]

Innovations Introduced

Lever House pioneered the use of a fully glazed curtain wall in a New York City high-rise office building, covering nearly 100 percent of the exterior surface with blue-green heat-absorbing glass panels framed by stainless steel mullions.[2] This system, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, represented a departure from traditional masonry facades, enabling larger floor plates free from structural columns at the perimeter and reducing the building's visual mass.[1] The curtain wall's prefabricated panels allowed for efficient assembly and maintenance, influencing the adoption of similar non-load-bearing enclosures in subsequent modernist skyscrapers.[17] The building's design also introduced an elevated three-story base separated from the 21-story tower, creating a publicly accessible open plaza at street level that spanned the full site width along Park Avenue.[9] This setback plaza, supported by slender steel columns, provided pedestrian circulation space and landscaping in Midtown Manhattan's dense urban fabric, predating zoning incentives for such open areas by over a decade.[14] By lifting the structure above the sidewalk, the design maximized natural light penetration into the courtyard and minimized street-level shadows, enhancing the urban environment.[1] Additional innovations included the integration of modern construction techniques with functional office planning, such as core-based mechanical systems that supported open-plan interiors without perimeter obstructions.[14] The use of stainless steel not only for framing but also for durability against corrosion marked an early application of advanced alloys in facade systems, contributing to the building's sleek, reflective aesthetic.[2] These elements collectively demonstrated a synthesis of engineering efficiency and aesthetic minimalism, setting precedents for International Style architecture in the United States.[1]

Historical Operations

Early Tenancy and Corporate Use (1952–1980s)

Upon its completion in 1952, Lever House functioned exclusively as the U.S. headquarters for Lever Brothers Company, a manufacturer of household products including soaps and detergents.[2] The 24-story structure provided approximately 290,000 square feet of office space designed to accommodate around 1,200 employees, with the upper 21 floors dedicated solely to the company's administrative, executive, and operational offices.[2] [18] No external tenants occupied any portion of the building during its initial years, reflecting Lever Brothers' intent to create a self-contained corporate environment that symbolized efficiency and modernity.[18] The ground floor featured an open courtyard accessible to the public, alongside a glass-enclosed reception area and art gallery, while the second floor housed a dining room, lounge, and auditorium for employee use.[2] These amenities supported daily corporate functions, including staff meals and presentations, underscoring the building's role in fostering a productive work environment integrated with innovative architectural features like open-plan offices and natural light penetration.[2] An underground garage further facilitated employee commuting in midtown Manhattan.[2] Through the 1970s and into the 1980s, Lever Brothers continued to occupy the entirety of the office spaces, with minor adaptations to meet evolving corporate needs.[2] In 1970, a geometric mural titled "Leverage" was installed to enhance the aesthetic of the third-floor roof garden, visible from interior spaces.[2] By 1982, the second-floor dining and lounge areas had been repurposed as a computer center, and the ground-floor auditorium converted into a conference room, indicating shifts toward technological integration and flexible meeting facilities while maintaining the building's primary use as Lever Brothers' New York offices.[2]

Mid-to-Late 20th Century Adaptations

During the 1970s, Lever House underwent minor artistic enhancements to its interior courtyard-facing wall. In 1970, a geometric mural titled Leverage, created by artist Robert Wiegaud, was installed on the side wall visible from the third-floor roof garden, aiming to improve aesthetic appeal for employees; the work received a Business and Arts Award for its integration with the modernist structure.[2] By the early 1980s, as Unilever adapted the building to evolving corporate needs, significant interior modifications occurred to accommodate technological advancements. The second-floor restaurant and employees' lounge, originally designed as social amenities, were converted into a computer center to support data processing operations. Similarly, the first-floor auditorium was repurposed as a conference room, reflecting a shift from communal gathering spaces to functional office infrastructure amid the rise of computing in business environments.[2] Exterior maintenance also involved adaptive changes to the pioneering curtain wall system. By 1982, approximately 30% of the original glass spandrel panels had cracked or broken due to material degradation over three decades of exposure, prompting their replacement with darker, more opaque glass variants to ensure structural integrity while preserving the facade's overall transparency and minimalism.[2] These interventions maintained operational viability without altering the building's core International Style form, though they subtly modified its visual uniformity.

Ownership Transitions and Building Condition

Lever House was constructed as the U.S. headquarters for Lever Brothers Company, a subsidiary of Unilever, which retained ownership following the building's completion on April 4, 1952.[18] Unilever continued to occupy the property as its primary tenant until vacating in 2003, after which the building hosted various corporate lessees amid periodic maintenance challenges, including documented issues with the original curtain wall system's sealing and thermal performance.[14] In 1998, RFR Realty, led by Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs, acquired a long-term leasehold interest in Lever House and initiated a major renovation, replacing the aging curtain wall with a new system while preserving the building's modernist aesthetic.[19] Under RFR's management through the 2000s and 2010s, the property experienced tenancy fluctuations and escalating operational costs, exacerbated by the facade's vulnerability to environmental degradation, which contributed to water infiltration and energy inefficiency despite prior upgrades.[20] Ownership transitioned in May 2020 to Brookfield Properties and WatermanCLARK following a protracted legal dispute with RFR Realty, stemming from mortgage default proceedings amid the property's underperformance and deferred maintenance needs.[21] [22] The new owners launched a $100 million restoration project in 2021, addressing systemic condition deficiencies such as outdated mechanical systems, plaza deterioration, and facade staining through comprehensive interventions including HVAC overhauls, new glazing, and landscape rehabilitation, with work substantially completing by November 2023.[23] [24] This effort restored the building to operational excellence, enhancing its resilience against urban wear while maintaining structural integrity verified through engineering assessments.[25]

Preservation and Restoration Efforts

1980s Demolition Threat and Landmark Designation

In the early 1980s, the owners of Lever House, Fisher Brothers, sought to demolish the structure to construct a taller 40-story office tower that would maximize rentable space on the valuable Park Avenue site.[26] This proposal highlighted the building's underutilization compared to contemporary high-rises, as its innovative design prioritized open space and aesthetics over density.[4] The Municipal Art Society of New York advocated strongly for preservation, emphasizing Lever House's pioneering role in modernist architecture and urban design along Park Avenue.[27] On February 9, 1982, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) held a public hearing on the proposed designation.[2] Following deliberation, the LPC unanimously voted on November 9, 1982, to designate Lever House as a city landmark, marking it as the first modernist building to receive such protection in New York City.[28][1] The designation faced ratification by the New York City Board of Estimate, with a deadline within three months, amid developer opposition that argued it stifled economic development.[26][29] Preservationists countered that the building's glass curtain wall and plaza exemplified International Style innovations worthy of safeguarding against replacement by generic towers. Ultimately, the Board approved the landmark status, averting demolition and establishing a precedent for protecting mid-20th-century architecture.[27][2]

2000s Facade Replacement and Maintenance

By the early 2000s, the original stainless steel mullions and framing of Lever House's curtain wall had deteriorated due to rusting, leading to misalignment and shifting of the glass panels.[8] This degradation compromised the building's weatherproofing and aesthetic integrity, necessitating a full replacement to prevent further structural issues.[8] Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the original architects, led the restoration project, completing the curtain wall replacement in 2001.[30] The firm removed the entire existing facade and installed a modern double-glazed system with insulated glass units, enhancing thermal performance while replicating the original blue-green tint and stainless steel finishes to comply with New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission requirements.[31][32] The new panels were positioned slightly forward—approximately 1/4 inch—to accommodate the thicker double-pane construction without altering the building's silhouette.[33] This intervention addressed the limitations of the pioneering single-pane design, which had proven inadequate for long-term energy efficiency and maintenance in New York City's climate.[17] Post-replacement, the facade restoration restored the structure's transparency and reflectivity, revitalizing its status as a modernist icon while enabling continued use as a multi-tenant office building.[30] SOM has since provided ongoing stewardship, including periodic inspections to mitigate recurrence of corrosion issues inherent to the glass-and-steel system.[34]

2020s Comprehensive Restoration

In 2023, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the original architects of Lever House, completed a $100 million comprehensive restoration of the building under the direction of developers Brookfield Properties and WatermanClark.[1][35] The project revitalized the 1952 modernist landmark for contemporary use, focusing on preservation while updating infrastructure and amenities.[24] The restoration encompassed the full replacement of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems; refinishing of the stainless-steel columns; and installation of new lighting throughout the structure.[30] The ground-level public plaza was renovated, restoring its original design intent as an open, accessible space, and the lobby was reimagined with contributions from interior designers Marmol Radziner.[33][36] Landscape architect Reed Hilderbrand enhanced the outdoor terrace areas to integrate with the plaza improvements.[36] Upper-floor office spaces, including a transformation of approximately 15,000 square feet on the third floor into modern workspaces, received entirely new interiors to meet 21st-century standards for efficiency and tenant appeal.[24] The effort built upon the 2001 facade restoration, ensuring the building's International Style features—such as its glass curtain wall and elevated tower—remained intact while addressing long-term maintenance needs.[1] Completion was announced in November 2023, positioning Lever House as a repositioned asset amid evolving office market demands in Midtown Manhattan.[23]

Reception and Impact

Initial and Contemporary Critical Reception

Upon its completion in 1952, Lever House received widespread acclaim from architectural publications for pioneering the use of a full glass curtain wall in a New York City office tower, which allowed for an unprecedented transparency and lightness compared to earlier masonry-clad skyscrapers.[2] The Architectural Record in June 1952 described the building's ground floor as featuring "the openness... where much of the area is garden and pedestrian," highlighting its innovative setback plaza as a break from dense street-level construction.[2] Similarly, Architectural Forum's June 1952 review emphasized the structure's completion as a milestone in integrating modern materials like stainless steel and heat-absorbing glass with functional office needs.[12] Critics at the time, including The New York Times' Aline B. Louchheim in her 1950 preview of the design exhibition, praised Lever House as "architecture of and for our day," underscoring its alignment with International Style principles of minimalism and rationality amid post-World War II urban renewal.[2] Gordon Bunshaft, the lead designer from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, was lauded for adapting European modernist influences—such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's glass towers—to the American commercial context, with the building's 21-story slab form and blue-green tinted glass evoking a sense of vertical elegance on Park Avenue.[37] This reception positioned Lever House as a catalyst for Midtown Manhattan's shift toward curtain-wall skyscrapers, influencing subsequent developments like the Seagram Building. In contemporary assessments, Lever House is frequently celebrated as an enduring icon of mid-20th-century modernism, with its 2023 restoration by SOM reaffirming its status as "the city's first fully glass-walled office building" and a benchmark for material innovation.[20] Architectural critics and preservationists, such as those in The New York Times in 1982, have described it as a "handsome tower" and "crucial example of the yearnings of modernist style," crediting its plaza for establishing the privately owned public space model under New York's 1961 zoning incentives.[26] However, postmodern theorists like Vincent Scully critiqued its aesthetic as contributing to a "fun-house effect" of repetitive glass facades that prioritized corporate uniformity over contextual urban vitality, a view that fueled debates until Bunshaft's death in 1990.[16] More recent evaluations acknowledge functional shortcomings for modern tenancy, such as the tower's compact 12,000-square-foot floors ill-suited to today's demand for expansive open-plan layouts, yet affirm its legacy in redefining skyline aesthetics.[38] Charles Jencks dismissed such corporate modernism as "background wallpaper and businessman's vernacular," reflecting broader skepticism toward the style's perceived sterility, though empirical assessments of its influence—evident in the proliferation of glass-clad towers—underscore its causal role in shaping global skyscraper typology.[39] Despite these critiques, the building's designation as a New York City Landmark in 1989 and National Historic Landmark nomination highlight a consensus on its historical significance over ideological objections.[26]

Architectural Influence and Legacy

Lever House, completed in 1952, pioneered the use of a fully glazed curtain wall in a Manhattan office skyscraper, marking a departure from traditional masonry facades and establishing a model for transparent, lightweight enclosures in high-rise design.[1] Designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the building's 21-story blue-green glass skin, supported by a steel frame, allowed for expansive views and natural light while minimizing structural mass, influencing the aesthetic of corporate modernism across the United States.[17] This innovation popularized non-load-bearing curtain walls, which became a hallmark of postwar skyscrapers, enabling faster construction and reduced material costs compared to earlier load-bearing systems.[34] The structure's elevated slab tower, set back on pilotis over a public plaza occupying 75% of the lot, exploited a provision in the 1916 New York City Zoning Resolution permitting reduced setbacks for buildings covering no more than 25% of their site, thereby creating open space that contrasted with dense street-wall developments.[2] This plaza configuration demonstrated the urban benefits of setback towers, contributing to the rationale behind the 1961 zoning amendments that incentivized plazas through floor-area bonuses, fostering a wave of slab-like towers with public open spaces in Midtown Manhattan.[40] As a touchstone of the International Style, Lever House synthesized European modernist principles with American commercial needs, heralding a new era of sleek, functional office towers that prioritized efficiency and legibility over ornamentation.[1] Its legacy endures in the proliferation of glass-clad corporate headquarters, from contemporaries like the Inland Steel Building to later iterations, affirming its role in transforming urban skyscraper typology toward greater transparency and setback forms.[34] Despite subsequent critiques of modernism's uniformity, the building remains recognized as a key monument in the evolution of high-rise architecture, with its design principles informing ongoing debates on facade technology and public realm integration.[2]

Economic and Functional Assessments

The construction of Lever House in 1952 cost approximately $6 million, reflecting its pioneering use of prefabricated components and curtain wall technology that reduced on-site labor.[16] Over time, the building's iconic status has supported premium economic performance, with full occupancy achieved following major renovations and rental rates consistently exceeding Midtown averages due to its prestige and location.[19] In 2007, asking rents reached $150 per square foot for available space, while post-2023 restoration leases have approached $200 per square foot amid demand for branded, historic trophy properties.[41] [42] However, operational challenges have periodically strained finances, as evidenced by 2018 difficulties refinancing an $85 million securitized mortgage amid high maintenance demands and market shifts.[43] The $100 million restoration completed in 2023 by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill addressed these issues, enhancing leasable value through modern amenities while preserving the structure's market appeal.[36] Functionally, Lever House's tower features compact floor plates of about 8,000 square feet, enabling deep daylight penetration, unobstructed Park Avenue views, and adaptable open-plan layouts suited to collaborative or boutique office uses rather than large corporate footprints.[44] The original design's extensive glass facade, while innovative for transparency and aesthetics, resulted in elevated energy demands, with cooling accounting for up to 59% of consumption in comparable mid-century curtain-wall buildings due to heat gain.[45] Post-restoration upgrades, including a dedicated outdoor air system (DOAS) delivering 100% fresh air and twice the ventilation of typical offices, have boosted efficiency by minimizing recirculation, enabling room-level climate control, and reclaiming 120 square feet per floor for tenant space through reduced mechanical bulkheads.[46] These enhancements also incorporate HEPA filtration, UV sanitation, and touchless features, improving occupant health and operational resilience without compromising the building's modernist core.[47]

Controversies and Criticisms

Design Flaws and Maintenance Challenges

The pioneering glass curtain wall of Lever House, completed in 1952, introduced vulnerabilities stemming from its experimental reliance on stainless steel mullions and wire-reinforced glass panels without sufficiently robust waterproofing measures.[14] Water infiltration through inadequate sealants allowed moisture to reach the carbon steel components within glazing pockets, causing rust expansion that bowed horizontal mullions and cracked spandrel panels.[1] This corrosion was exacerbated by the building's exposure to New York City's weather, leading to widespread deterioration by the late 20th century.[8] Maintenance challenges intensified as the design's minimal structural redundancy complicated repairs; by 1995, 40 to 50 percent of the original 120,000 square feet of glass had been replaced due to leaks from faulty joints and malfunctioning gaskets.[48] The curtain wall's inaccessibility from the ground required specialized scaffolding or suspended platforms for interventions, driving up costs and logistical complexity.[49] A full facade replacement in 2001 addressed immediate failures but highlighted the ongoing burden of preserving early modernist envelopes, with subsequent issues like condensation persisting into restorations.[37] These problems underscore the causal link between the building's aesthetic priorities—maximizing transparency and minimalism—and practical shortcomings in durability and service life.[50]

Preservation vs. Development Debates

In the early 1980s, the owners of Lever House, seeking to capitalize on zoning allowances for greater density, proposed demolishing the 1952 structure to erect a taller skyscraper on the Park Avenue site, arguing that the building's modest 21-story height underutilized the lot's development potential amid rising real estate values.[26] Preservation advocates countered that such action would erase a pioneering example of International Style architecture, notable for its innovative glass curtain wall and setback plaza, which had influenced subsequent Midtown Manhattan designs.[29] The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Lever House as a landmark on November 9, 1982, citing its role as the first large-scale commercial building to employ an all-glass facade and its contribution to redefining corporate modernism in the postwar era.[51] Developers, including Fisher Brothers, challenged the designation, contending that the building lacked the aesthetic preeminence of contemporaries like the Seagram Building and proposing alternatives such as adaptive reuse or partial expansion to balance preservation with economic viability.[52] The dispute escalated to the City Board of Estimate, which faced pressure from architectural historians and groups like the Municipal Art Society, who emphasized the structure's historical significance as the inaugural mid-century modern landmark.[53] On February 10, 1983, the Board of Estimate upheld the landmark status by a 6-5 vote, averting demolition and establishing a precedent for protecting postwar modernist buildings against profit-driven redevelopment.[54] This outcome reflected broader tensions in New York City's urban policy between heritage conservation and market demands, with critics of the decision highlighting potential constraints on site intensification, while supporters viewed it as essential to maintaining the city's architectural diversity.[29] No major development threats have resurfaced since, as subsequent restorations have reinforced the building's protected status.[37]

Modernist Ideology Critiques

Critics of modernist ideology have identified Lever House as a prime example of the International Style's emphasis on abstract purity and technological expression at the expense of urban continuity and human engagement. The building's design, with its glass curtain wall and elevated plaza set back from Park Avenue, embodied modernism's rejection of historical ornament and street-wall alignment in favor of a "machine for living" aesthetic inspired by European precedents like those of Mies van der Rohe. This approach, while innovative for corporate symbolism in 1952, prioritized visual transparency and hygienic separation from the "messy" street level, reflecting an ideological commitment to rationalism and universality that disregarded contextual integration.[16] Architect Robert A.M. Stern has argued that such modernist designs, including Lever House, stemmed from a "messianic view" that existing buildings were "junk," leading to structures that aggressively stood out rather than harmonized with their surroundings. Stern specifically critiqued the building's streetscape as "lousy" with "very bad curb appeal," noting that the plaza, though initially hailed for openness, became a failure by deterring lingering pedestrians and severing active engagement with the avenue.[16] This outcome underscored modernism's ideological flaw in assuming elevated, abstract forms would enhance urban life, instead fostering isolation and underutilized spaces that contradicted the vitality of traditional street-level activity. Vincent Scully Jr. extended this critique by faulting Lever House for "gouging a hole in the wall of the avenue," which disrupted Park Avenue's pre-existing civility and contributed to a broader "death of the street" in modernist urbanism.[16] Postmodern architectural theorist Charles Jencks similarly viewed the style's evolution through Lever House as culminating in a "businessman's vernacular" of faceless uniformity, where ideological minimalism—"less is more"—devolved into sterile repetition lacking cultural resonance or adaptability to social needs. These perspectives highlight how Lever House's adherence to modernist tenets of functionalism and anti-ornamentalism, while technically pioneering, promoted environments detached from empirical urban dynamics, prioritizing ideological abstraction over lived experience.[39]

References

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  2. [PDF] Lever House - NYC.gov
  3. Seven decades after designing Lever House, SOM is overseeing its ...
  4. Lever House: History, Architecture, and Facts - Buildings DB
  5. 390 Park Ave, New York, NY 10022 - Lever House - PropertyShark
  6. Lever House, the glass skyscraper. - MOARQS
  7. Normandie Theatre in New York, NY - Cinema Treasures
  8. [PDF] LEVER HOUSE - NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK - WordPress.com
  9. AD Classics: Lever House / SOM | ArchDaily
  10. Lever House Skidmore, Owings & Merrill - World-Architects
  11. Lever House - SLADE ARCHITECTURE
  12. [PDF] Contextual fields: Design methods in the construction of Lever House
  13. https://www.columbia.edu/cu/gsapp/BT/LEVER/report.html
  14. lever house - technical report
  15. Press - LeverHouse
  16. Forever Modern
  17. Lever House: A Glass Curtain Wall Icon by SOM | ArchEyes
  18. [PDF] LEVER - House, NEW YORK: GLASS AND STEEL WALLS
  19. 390 Park Avenue Lever House - RFR
  20. Lever House Would Lather You Look Beyond Its Famed Sheath to ...
  21. Aby Rosen Hands Over Lever House to Tod Waterman, Brookfield
  22. Landmark Lever House boasts Park Ave. views, modern design after ...
  23. Lever House Completes $100 Million Renovation At 390 Park ...
  24. SOM Completes Restoration of New York's Lever House, Seven ...
  25. A Bold Restoration Returns Lever House to Its Heyday - SOM
  26. ARCHITECTURE VIEW; LEVER HOUSE AWAITS THE DECISION ...
  27. MASterworks Awards – The Municipal Art Society of New York
  28. LEVER HOUSE OFFICE TOWER DECLARED A CITY LANDMARK
  29. Save the Lever landmark - CSMonitor.com
  30. SOM returns to Lever House, originally built in 1952, to complete a ...
  31. Lever House Gets a Squeaky-Clean Restoration - Curbed
  32. Lever House Skidmore, Owings & Merrill - World-Architects
  33. SOM completes restoration of New York's historic Lever House
  34. Lever House - Docomomo US
  35. Lever House - 390 Park Avenue, New York, NY
  36. SOM's Lever House receives a $100 million refresh
  37. Lever House in New York gets a 21st-century makeover
  38. The WeWork-ification of Lever House - Curbed
  39. Lever House: How the Leopard Got Its Spots | by SOM - Medium
  40. Fourth Era: Impact of 1961 Zoning – Skyline
  41. 1 Bryant Park Nears Full; Lever House at $150 a Foot | Observer
  42. Branded Office Buildings in NYC: Are They Worth the Price Tag?
  43. From profit to peril on Park Avenue - Crain's New York Business
  44. At 53rd and Park in Manhattan, SOM Renews Lever House
  45. The Energy Performance of Mid-Century Metal-and-Glass Curtain ...
  46. 390 Park Avenue, NYC - Sustainability - Lever House
  47. Dedicated Outdoor Air System Sparks Revival of New York City Tower
  48. POSTINGS: Landmark's Curtain Wall Is Deteriorating; Aging Lever ...
  49. Building of the Day: Lever House tour by Archtober
  50. [PDF] GLAZED CURTAIN WALL ASSEMBLIES - Hoffmann Architects
  51. Buildings – Sky Marks Landmarks - The Skyscraper Museum
  52. THE REGION; Lever House: Too Nice to Die? - The New York Times
  53. History – The Municipal Art Society of New York
  54. Opinion | LEVER HOUSE IS INDISPUTABLY A LANDMARK
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