The Seagram On Park

The Seagram building, at 375 Park Avenue and 53rd Street, is one of my favorite buildings in all of Manhattan. It's one of the few sky scrapers with a plaza in it front of it. It was designed by Mies van der Rohe and built in 1958.

The Seagram Building's plaza at 375 Park Avenue

Made of bronze and glass, it's like a modern sculpture in the sky. The beauty of the building is the plaza in front of it. It acts as a platform or a pedestal of sorts, giving the piece (the sky scraper) room to be viewed. When you look through the lobby from the outside you can see right through to the back of building, giving it a light, floating feeling. The additional office space needed was built behind the main building--a smaller building on 53rd Street, home of what used to be the famous Brasserie restaurant where I used to go as a kid, and is now The Four Seasons restaurant.

Mies van der Rohe, who emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1937, was such a genius. So much so that many architects designing Manhattan office buildings took from the original Mies design--minimal modern glass and metal.