1585 Broadway (originally Solomon Equities Building)
ONCE THE modernist aesthetic of unity and structural expression was abandoned as yet another historical style, rather than the irreducible essence of architecture, architects adopted an “a-little-bit-of-everything” approach. Gwathmey Siegel’s first skyscr
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GWATHMEY SIEGEL AND ASSOCIATES ,
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n c e t h e modernist aesthetic of unity and structural expression was abandoned as yet another historical style, rather than the irreducible essence of architecture, architects adopted an “a-little-bit-of-everything” approach. Gwathmey Siegel’s first skyscraper is one of the more successful, because seeing the building from different vantage points makes you perceive it differently. The 52-story office tower’s graphic façade of blue-green glass, white patterned glass, mirrored glass, silvery gray aluminum, and stainless steel can be read in many different ways, depending on light and atmosphere. It is both reflective and transparent, giving an illusion of metallic solidity and glassy evanescence. Details of the façade, such as the curved aluminum midsection and the corners tipped with mirror glass, catch and reflect sunlight. The building refuses to be perceived as a coherent whole, in
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1990
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keeping with the disjunctive aesthetic of postmodernism, and the jittery, electronic character of the Times Square area. The cornice of the platform is defined by three amber-colored, 157-foot-long zip strips that flash stock quotes. Pixellated advertisements play on corner billboards, another step toward the electronic architecture anticipated in films like Blade Runner. In reaction to the Internationalists’ suppression of applied symbolic elements, façades are now verging on pure symbolism in the form of electronic information. The tower has a sleek, hide-and-seek structure, with massive framing piers at street level, but nearly invisible mullions in the tower. One scans the restless façade the same way one tries to decipher meaning from the cascading financial figures of the zip strip. (In the early 1990s, architectural historian Robert A. M. Stern and graphic designer Tibor Kalman were retained by the State Urban Development Corporation to set
a special zoning code for the scale and location of all new signage in the area to preserve some of Times Square’s carnivalesque atmosphere.) The building is organized into three main sections, with its platform oriented toward the diagonal of Broadway. A blind, curved, mechanical floor of heating and ventilation grilles paneled in shiny aluminum facilitates the transition to the office tower, which is laid out orthogonally along the street grid. Shallow setbacks at the crown evoke Art Deco skyscrapers. Only from a distance does the sloping, ornamental roof spring into view to provide a distinctive silhouette. The grand, through-block lobby provides one of those great disjunctive postmodern moments. In contrast to the flashy mutability of the façade, the interior materials are solid and luxurious. The glossy black, white, and green marble floor echoes the tricky gridded patterns of the façade. A deeply coffered wood ceiling adds a modernist sense of warmth to the space. The detailing of the overall motif of circles in squares is excellent, from the shiny metal disks under the revolving doors to the round structural columns and the circular
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