![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sdg-migration-met.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/12211400\/1173b4f12a3510e8b515fe48d6c68c1b-SonyBuildingbyDavidShankbone.jpg\")
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Next year, the Landmarks Preservation Commission of New York City will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its founding. It was created to protect architecturally, historically, or culturally important buildings that New Yorkers want saved. Landmarking is a tricky and often controversial process, and buildings must be at least 30 years old before the Commission will consider designating them.<\/p>\n
The problem is that in the past decade, the Commission has been slow to landmark buildings from the heyday of Postmodernism, the early 1970s to 1984 (the latest year that a structure is currently eligible for landmarking). Michael Gotkin, a landscape architect and preservation advocate, notes that the recent recladding of Philip Johnson and John Burgee\u2019s iconic Takashimaya Building on Fifth Avenue was a wake-up call. \u201cThe demolition and redesign of a slew of Postmodern designs, including the South Street Seaport building, the Cherry Hill landscape in Central Park, and the threat to the Frick Collection\u2019s wonderful entry pavilion and garden, demonstrate the urgency for the Landmarks Commission to designate and protect significant works from the 1970s and 1980s\u2014itself an era of awareness about historic preservation,\u201d says Gotkin, who cofounded the Modern Architecture Working Group, an organization that has successfully lobbied for preserving several postwar buildings in New York City. \u201cTo complicate matters, many Postmodern contributions to the cityscape are frequently additions to previously landmarked buildings. Presently, the Commission lacks a consistent methodology for dealing with the preservation of later modifications, including Postmodern additions, to historic buildings, landscapes, and districts.\u201d<\/p>\n
We have come up with our own watchlist of overlooked gems that will start the debate over Postmodern architecture and design\u2019s contribution to Manhattan. Of course, it will be a challenge to draw attention to these structures, considering the many baby boomer architects who rebelled against Postmodernism in their youth, and might now be loath to protect buildings and landscapes from that era. Perhaps a younger, more open-minded generation will decide the fate of Postmodern design\u2019s legacy. Docopomo, anyone? \u2014Paul Makovsky<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a>Sony Tower (1984)<\/strong> All manner of abuses were hurled at the Sony Tower, formerly the AT&T Building, after its completion in 1984. Yet, in the decades after, the 37-story high-rise would be reappraised by the public. Prescient for its time, the design\u2019s historicist shtick has aged with surprising grace, its once-goofball Chippendale top having acquired the architectural gravitas of the city\u2019s most cherished skyscrapers. \u201cThe AT&T Building, to me, is the most obvious contender for landmarking,\u201d says Andrew S. Dolkart, director of the Historic Preservation Program at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. \u201cWhether one likes or appreciates Postmodernism or not, it\u2019s a key work in the history of American design.\u201d Dolkart notes the Tower\u2019s \u201cexcellent\u201d construction, particularly the handling of the exterior\u2019s pink Stony Creek granite\u2014a key feature that sets 550 Madison Avenue apart from its glass-and-steel brethren. The Landmarks Preservation Commission seems less inclined to list the building, even after it was sold in 2013 to the developer Chetrit Group, which plans to convert part of the building into condos. An even more tenacious battle awaits Johnson\u2019s other Postmodern New York works. <\/a>1001 Fifth Avenue (1978)<\/strong><\/p>\n The apartment infill at 1001 Fifth Avenue is the pedimented stepchild of the 1910 McKim, Mead & White building next door.\u00a0Ironically, the building falls within the Metropolitan Museum Historic District, which was established in response to the demolition of the buildings that made way for Johnson and Burgee\u2019s insertion, among others.<\/p>\n <\/a>Fifty-Third at Third (1986)<\/strong> The Mendelsohn-inflected Lipstick Building\u2014as the tower was soon nicknamed\u2014is one if the few non-orthogonal buildings in a city, the critic Michael Sorkin wrote at the time, whose “relentless rectilinearity seems needless.”\u00a0Johnson noted this, saying that the building would be a\u00a0“special monument” for the city.<\/p>\n <\/a>Bergdorf Goodman facade (1983-84)<\/strong> Originally, Bergdorf Goodman was housed in one of seven linked stores designed by Ely Jacques Kahn in 1927. As the department store expanded, it took over all of the nearest buildings, except for the jewelry store on the corner. The company then turned to Allan Greenber\u2014recommended by Philip Johnson\u2014to create a facade that would unify the buildings. \u201cI met with Ira Neimark, CEO of Bergdorf Goodman at the time,\u201d says Greenberg. \u201cHe wanted three things: for the facade to look like it\u2019s been there all the time, for it to have large and small display windows, and a new entrance on Fifth Avenue because the current entrance they had in 1984 was a single ordinary door.\u201d The result had an aura of agelessness. \u201cI asked the editor of an architectural magazine if they would publish it,\u201d says Greenberg. \u201cShe said, \u2018Oh God, no! That\u2019s been there for a long time.\u2019 I took this as a compliment.\u201d <\/a>Frick Collection Pavilion (1977)<\/b><\/span> Amidst all the controversy over the Frick Collection\u2019s proposed expansion, one overlooked gem is a 1977 addition in the form of a classical pavilion by Bayley, van Dyke, and Poehler. In his recent argument for saving the Russell Page garden, New York Times <\/em>critic Michael Kimmelman seems willing to sacrifice the\u00a0pavilion\u2014quite wrongly, in our opinion. Writing in 1979 in his book The City Observed: New York: A Guide to the Architecture of Manhattan, the critic Paul Goldberger pointed out that creating a true classical pavilion in the 1970s was \u201ca daring idea.\u201d It might have seemed ridiculous to some architects at the time,\u00a0but as Goldberger notes, \u201cModern architecture is a fallen angel, and what there is of an architectural vanguard seems more concerned with turning back to history again.\u201d He observed that the pavilion not only integrated well with the rest of the Frick complex, it fit in with its neighbors along 70th Street. \u2014PM<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a>Le Parker Meridien Hotel Atrium and Galleria (1981)<\/strong> In 1979, the City gave special permission to Le Parker Meridien for a mixed hotel and apartment development, and an eight-floor zoning bonus in return for a public through-block arcade that included an outdoor plaza.<\/p>\n Todd Lee designed the entrance on 57th Street with patterned marble floors and walls and a classical pediment that leads to a vaulted, faux-painted, Tuscan colonnaded passage. This opens to a three-story-high rectangular mid-block atrium, then connects through to 57th Street.<\/p>\n While some buildings segregate their public spaces, Le Parker Meridien \u201cby design and management has so masterfully integrated the through-block arcade into its own functional orbit that it is difficult to tell where private ends and public begins,\u201d writes Jerold S. Kayden in Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience<\/em><\/a>. The arcade is also the hotel\u2019s lobby, and the City and building owner have been engaged in a series of legal disputes over the seating in the space. \u2014PM<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a>Townhouse for Matt Sabatine (1984) Some of the Postmodern buildings now eligible for preservation once had to contend with landmarking decisions themselves. Matt Sabatine\u2019s townhouse, designed by Agrest and Gandelsonas Architects after Manhattan\u2019s Upper East Side was landmarked in 1981, is a fine case in point.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to make an interpretation, quite clearly,\u201d Agrest says. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to replicate a historic building.\u201d The solution, which had to be approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, was to build a curved limestone facade that, in Agrest\u2019s words, was a \u201chinge between two institutional buildings that had almost opposing styles\u201d\u2014the Modernist Asia House by Philip Johnson and the Gothic Central Presbyterian Church. During the approval process, the rectilinear base, originally designed as an indoor garage, remained as a way to echo the edge of the street. \u201cWe had to compromise at some point, because of the commission. A lot of other people got away with things, doing whatever,\u201d Agrest says, ruefully. \u201cBut that\u2019s a long story.\u201d \u2014Avinash <\/em>Rajagopal<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a>AXA Equitable Building (1985)<\/strong> When the 752-foot-high, 1,740,000-square-foot Equitable Center opened its doors, Paul Goldberger critiqued it in the New York Times<\/em> as \u201cat once…Modern and \u2018Postmodern.\u2019\u201d Yet it is precisely this admixture of design philosophies that makes the building an important marker of a moment in New York\u2019s architectural history\u2014when the great Modernists, Edward Larrabee Barnes among them, began to reconsider their ideas. The most spectacular parts of the building are the common and public spaces\u2014the lobby is a shrine to contemporary art with a mural by Roy Lichtenstein and two galleries.\u00a0\u2014AR<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a>870 Park Avenue (1974)<\/strong> When Robert A. M. Stern was brought on to renovate this Upper East Side townhouse, he knew it was a big opportunity. \u201cI was a young architect,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a big commission on a prominent site, so I did all I could to make it something of consequence.\u201d Sterns\u2019s goal was to design a Modern building that could also work contextually within the traditional neighborhood. \u201cThe design has what I thought were pretty daring [features] in those days\u2014 classically derived pilasters and proportions with ornaments,\u201d he says, \u201call of which I think fall into the Postmodern sensibility that was emerging at the time.\u201d\u00a0\u2014SS<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a>ONE\u00a0UN New York (1975, 1983)<\/strong> Unlike their peers, who painlessly transitioned into Postmodernism, Roche and Dinkeloo persisted in their late-Modern tastes well into the late 1980s. Opened in 1975, the Ambassador Grill at One United Nations Plaza straddles the two periods. Its wedges of latticed mirrors\u2014which Herbert Muschamp, explaining how Rem Koolhaas was once a frequent visitor, suggested had influenced OMA\u2019s design for the Seattle Public Library\u2014and touches of period glamour make for a delirious experience. Outside, in the lobby of the Millennium Hotels\u2019s ONE UN New York, completed later in 1983, the architects piled more mirrors in the entrance vestibule, whose conical, beehive-like ceiling recalls the Alhambra. The corridor connecting the two employs classical columns, which Roche and Dinkeloo had previously developed for the <\/a>Central Park Zoo (1980\u20131988)<\/strong> and deployed in the lobby of <\/a>31 West 52nd Street<\/strong> (1987)<\/strong>, formerly the E.F. Hutton Building. \u201cThe lobby merits comparison to some of the great Art Deco lobbies in terms of its elaborate detail,\u201d says Kyle Johnson, a Roche expert who consulted on an exhibition about the architect at the Museum of the City of New York in 2012. The firm\u2019s decade-spanning work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art\u00a0is less appreciated. The museum recently announced plans to gut and remodel the <\/a>Lila Acheson Wallace Wing (1987)<\/strong>, the last of Roche and Dinkeloo\u2019s additions. \u201cNot a great piece of architecture on its own,\u201d Johnson admits, \u201cbut a major change will also alter the overall master-planned expansion.\u201d\u00a0\u2014SM<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a>Banca\u00a0Commerciale Italiana (1982\u20131986) For a modest building, this 11-story structure wedged into William Street in the Financial District has an outsized significance. It was the first building in the city in many years to be designed by a noted European architect. The Milanese Banca Commerciale Italiana hired the Italian Gino Valle to fill out the tiny trapezoidal city block that already contained the 1907 Seligman Building. Valle was a Modernist at the time, but here he designed a detailed limestone companion to the older building, picking out the floors with coursing in gleaming black granite and topping it with a wireframe turret. International critics took notice. \u201cKenneth Frampton wrote about it in Domus<\/em>, it was on the cover of Lotus International,<\/em> and Manfredo\u00a0Tafuri mentions it in his book on the history of Italian architecture,\u201d says Brian Kish, a curator and expert in Italian design. \u201cEven though, physically, it\u2019s quite small, the ideas are quite large. I\u2019d say it\u2019s a real gem.\u201d \u2014AR<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a>Exterior of Domenico\u00a0Vacca (1984) The stylish facade of Domenico Vacca is what remains of Michael Graves\u2019s original design for a Diane von Furstenberg store at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel. Against the backdrop of the extravagant 1980s, when money and greed were virtues, the fashion designer wanted a new couture shop aimed at an affluent, showier woman. \u201cMake it a little shrine to Venus,\u201d she told Graves. \u201cMake it a place where a woman can walk in and dream and fantasize, and for a man who wants to indulge her.\u201d Two million dollars later, Graves replaced the existing storefront with a new facade that sensitively conformed to the historical character of the hotel.<\/p>\n The two-story boutique had a gilded Grecian vessel, designed by Graves, set in the glass facade over the front door (to \u201cgather in light and symbolize the feminine spirits\u201d), and a tented salesroom on the first floor. The detailing and composition of the shop gave it the ambience of a fine wardrobe cabinet.\u00a0\u2014PM\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a>Schermerhorn Hall (1985)<\/strong> When Torre was hired to renovate Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia University, a structure built by McKim, Mead & White in 1896, she had to rectify a brutal 1939 modernization that had replaced McKim\u2019s grand entrance hall with a cramped vestibule, and his monumental stairs with an elevator. Torre\u2019s understanding of architectural history informed her plan, which was especially fitting since the users were the art history and archaeology departments. She added spatial complexity while referencing ornamental details from the McKim design. The stairway now includes globe lights, which are repeated in the classroom halls on the upper floors, but the golden marble cladding is unique to the sunlit lobby. \u201cMcKim\u2019s original building was full of architectural subtleties,\u201d Daralice D. Boles wrote in Progressive Architecture at the time. \u201cTorre, too, introduces architectural ideas that may elude most building users. For example, structural piers, which raise the height of the building, are treated as continuous columns, with a base at the entrance level and a capital on the top floor.\u201d \u2014PM<\/em><\/p>\n
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\nPhilip\u00a0Johnson and John Burgee
\n550 Madison Avenue<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sdg-migration-met.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/12211401\/5171ed04c36398d6902f0263456b9d75-AT26T.jpg\")
<\/p>\nCourtesy Wikipedia Commons<\/h4>\n
\n\u2014Samuel Medina<\/em><\/p>\n
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\nThe “Lipstick Building”<\/p>\n
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\nAllan Greenberg
\n754 Fifth Avenue<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sdg-migration-met.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/12211403\/dee6972b011630502cacd2520ec8103e-172A1671.jpg\")
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\n\u2014Shannon Sharpe<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sdg-migration-met.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/12211404\/ec79a67e72abd0ad450ce1aba4b2cffc-172A1692.jpg\")
<\/p>\nBecause the marble originally used on the building is no longer quarried, Greenberg designed his arched entry in hard Wisconsin limestone, for as close a color match as possible.<\/h4>\n
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\nJohn Barrington Bayley, Harry van Dyke, and G. Frederick Poehler
\n1 East 70th Street<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\nBayley joined the city\u2019s first Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1962, later served as its deputy director, and cofounded Classical America with Poehler.<\/h4>\n
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\nGalleria by Todd Lee, Building by Philip Birnbaum
\n118 West 57th Street<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\nLe Parker Meridien Hotel replaced the 12-story Great Northern Hotel designed by Schwartz & Gross in 1910.<\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sdg-migration-met.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/12211408\/4667e712e1edadcf73c489b7b797fd59-172A2248.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe 600-room hotel, designed by Philip Birnbaum with a mid-block galleria by Todd Lee,\u00a0also had 100 rental apartments on the top nine floors.<\/h4>\n
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\n\u200b<\/strong>\u00a0Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas
\n110 East 64th\u00a0Street<\/p>\n
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<\/strong><\/p>\nBecause the townhouse was in a historic district, the mullions had to be thickened to more closely match the others in the neighborhood.<\/h4>\n
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\nEdward Larrabee Barnes
\n787 Seventh Avenue<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sdg-migration-met.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/12211409\/f7b9ffe5011afa18da526877b87f3a65-44479541322a6ce10b2co.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAs part of the building\u2019s design, a sky-lit, open-air pedestrian passageway connects 51st and 52nd Streets mid-block.<\/h4>\n
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\nRobert A.M. Stern and John S. Hagmann<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sdg-migration-met.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/12211410\/209871539bafd13b1d094e89028aa764-172A1483.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe original owner of this home was the businessman Leonard Stern. The interiors were destroyed in a fire in 1992, but the exterior remains true to the Stern and Hagmann design.<\/h4>\n
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\nKevin Roche, John Dinkeloo, and Associates
\n1 United Nations Plaza<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sdg-migration-met.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/12211411\/fe180c98888134e1da684085b805b3bd-172A2199.jpg\")
<\/strong><\/p>\nIt’s been eight years since the Ambassador Grill last served lunch or dinner. The kitchen continues to spoon out bowls of oatmeal for breakfast, while the bar opens later in the evening, offering a small selection of bottled beers. In 2012, the hotel was sold and the new owners have announced their intention to gut Ambassador<\/a>.\u200b<\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sdg-migration-met.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/12211412\/123e1298cce7b572e505a50fd01fb6d7-172A2204.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe mirror hallway linking the hotel lobby to the restaurant may also be threatened. The classical-inflected columns are versions of those first introduced at the Central Park Zoo.<\/h4>\n
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\n\u200b<\/strong>Gino\u00a0Valle\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>
\n1 William Street<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sdg-migration-met.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/12211413\/80a711fd5e211c46c610ac8ee0390e04-172A1137.jpg\")
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<\/em><\/p>\nValle\u2019s building influenced later works in New York City, such as the limestone and granite facade of 712 Fifth Avenue (1991) by Kohn Pedersen Fox.<\/h4>\n
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\n\u200b<\/strong>Michael Graves & Associates
\n781 Fifth Avenue<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sdg-migration-met.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/12211415\/ece8d5ca26fc84354c3f657a0e25d2c1-172A1876.jpg\")
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<\/p>\nWhen fashion designer Geoffrey Beene moved onto the premises in 1989, he had the whole interior redesigned.<\/h4>\n
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\nSusana Torre, with Wank\u00a0Adams Slavin Associates
\n1190 Amsterdam Avenue<\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sdg-migration-met.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/12211417\/519c741698c111ffa332d8764e5b5f3b-Schemmerhorn2C2086-17321.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTorre\u2019s $6.25 million renovation included a 200-seat auditorium, several offices, two galleries, and a visual resources center.<\/h4>\n
Courtesy Norman McGrath<\/h4>\n
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