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Saturday, April 30, 2011

Lever House

This is one of those landmark buildings that has seen changing fortunes. According to Wikipedia:

Lever House, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and located at 390 Park Avenue in New York City, is the quintessential and seminal glass box International style skyscraper according to the design principles of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Completed in 1952, it was the first curtain wall skyscraper in New York City.[2] The 92 meters tall building features an innovative courtyard and public space. Most of the headquarters of the corporations on and around Park Avenue adopted this style of building. In 1961 it was copied as the Terminal Sud of Paris-Orly and in 1965 as the highrise of the Europa-Center in Berlin.

Between 1991-98, the building deteriorated badly. It lost, for instance, most of its initial green glass panels. Unilever had only the top four floors of the building and moved its offices to Greenwich, CT.

In 1998 a German company bought the property and did an extensive restoration of it.

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