Lever House

Gordon Bunshaft skidmore, owinGs, and merrill completed 1952

michael tyznik

When the British soap magnates the Lever Brothers built their American headquarters in 1951, they had one word in mind: clean. In the middle of the pollution and grime of New York City, their headquarters had to sparkle like freshly cleaned crystal. This was the task delegated to Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. I have to disclose before continuing that I fell in love with the Lever House at first sight when I was visiting New York last fall. I knew nothing about the building or its history, and the building had just undergone a complete restorationa massive undertaking. Due to this, I think I got a relatively accurate impression of what the effect of the building was immediately after its completion. It speaks volumes about Bunshafts design that even after fifty-plus years of constant change and growth taking place around it, Lever House is still a stop-in-your-tracks building. It stands apart from everything else around it, its blue-green glass impeccably clean, a simple rectangular prism subtly criscrossed with bands of dark-green spandrel glass and silver vertical hairline mullions. One can only imagine what the effect must have been like in 1950, when it was a completely radical design. The Lever Houses design had two major firsts for New York City, the curtain wall and the public plaza. Both of these were replicated in other projects by other architects, but they never quite had the same effect that they do in the Lever House. The curtain wall enabled Bunshaft to create a perfectly prismatic faade. By pulling the structure back behind the skin, the building becomes a crystal box, which, due to constant washing, symbolizes the Lever Brothers commit-

ment to cleaninliness. Interestingly, the treatment of the skin enables Bunshaft to forego committing to either verticality or horizontality in the faade. During the day, the continuous silver mullions running up the entire height of the building shine in the sun, emphasizing its verticality, while at night, the mullions disappear and the alternating bands of lit windows and dark spandrel glass emphasize horizontality. The Lever Brothers decision to include a public plaza in the design had an incredible effect on New York city planning. The Lever Building has no street-level retail. Instead, the entire buildingthe tower and its plinthare raised up on pilotis, creating a large, open public space. The tower is offset to one edge of the site to let light penetrate down through the doughnut of the plinth into the plaza. This arrangement is another way the Lever House stands out in dense Manhattanthere is a lot of empty space on the site. The reason this type of public sace worked so well on this project was that it was clearly bounded by the buildings around it. These frontages provided activity which spilled into the plaza, making it come to life and creating a unique public space. Once other developers saw the success of Lever Houses plaza, they wanted them incorporated into their buildings. Eventually the government created an incentive for planners to incorporate public plazas into their designs, and the number of plazas has grown exponentially. Unfortunately, this only dilutes the success of Lever Houses plaza. Without boundaries clearly defined by building frontages, these plazas all bleed together into one space without very much activity. Despite this, Lever House manages to maintain its distinction in the chaos of New York City.