Lever House

Name	Lever House
Caption	Lever House, New York City
Location	390 Park AvenueNew York, New York 10022 USA
Iso region	US-NY_source:dewiki
Coordinates format	dms
Coordinates display	title
Floor count	24
Start date	1951
Completion date	1952
Architect	Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
Main contractor	George A. Fuller Co.
References

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 according to the design principles of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Completed in 1952, it was the first 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 1961 it was copied as the Terminal Sud of Paris-Orly and in 1965 as the highrise of the Europa-Center in Berlin.

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 Centre and initial buildings of the Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center.

The building featured a glimmering 24-storey 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 storeys 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. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the building's architect, also performed the curtain wall replacement.

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

Lever House at Great Buildings Online

Lever House photographs at galinsky.com

Casa Lever Restaurant

Category:International style architecture Category:International style buildings in the United States Category:Modernist architecture in New York Category:Landmarks in New York City Category:Skyscrapers in New York City Category:Buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Manhattan Category:Buildings and structures completed in 1952 Category:Skidmore, Owings and Merrill buildings