Seagram Building

The Seagram Building is an International Style skyscraper designed between 1954 and 1955 by Mies van der Rohe, and built between 1955 and 1958, for a reported $37.8 million dollars, in New York, NY.

Its precise street address is 375 Park Ave, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

The Seagram Building is a structure of significant importance both for the city of New York and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the International Style style. Because of that, the Seagram Building was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on February 24^th 2006, and was also included in the New York Register of Historic Places on October 3^rd 1989.

Mies decides to take a step back from 4th avenue and created a plaza in front of the building. At that time it was not common for a private project to create public space, but Mies thought the "breathing" space was necessary in order to appreciate the architecture.

The Seagram Building soon became the typological example for office towers. For Mies himself, the Seagram Building was the perfect materialization of Universal Space for the working environment.

The building underwent a major restoration in 2016.

Mies van der Rohe was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

But that's not all, there was also a whole team of architects involved, which included: Philip Johnson, Ely Jacques Kahn, and Robert Allan Jacobs.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Seagram Building a reality:

• Severud Associates Consulting Engineers in charge of Structural Engineering
• Jaros, Baum & Bolles in charge of MEP Engineering

The Seagram Building can be categorized as an International Style building.

The Seagram Building was designed in 1954. By 1954 the International Style movement had already left its early days behind and could be considered a mature movement, which does not mean it was loved and accepted by everyone, on the contrary. The International Style was accepted by the architecture community way before it was by the general public, and it is therefore likely that the Seagram Building was not well received by everyone at the time.

The Seagram Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and reinforced concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a curtain wall composed of 153,000 sq.ft. of bronze cladding and 122,000 sq.ft. of pinkish-gray tinted glass.

The building is crowned by a metal grid spanning the height of 3 floors.

Another material found at the Seagram Building is travertine marble, used for the continuous pavement that covers the plaza (outdoor) and the lobby (indoor).