devoted to introduction and last model has served as the basis

explaining the conceptual model. for architectural treatises up to the

Some readers might find the twentieth century. And then there
organization of the book a little are the self-conscious revisions
cumbersome (Chapter 1 starts on of the received view—attempts
p. 50). Geva does not consider each to pull back the “veil of belief,” as
of Wright’s projects separately. Claude Lévi-Strauss referred to the
She uses a comparative analysis condition necessary that permits
that considers his religious work, one to simultaneously accept two
built and unbuilt, across the mutually exclusive propositions: the
conceptual framework of faith, structure of myth. Ostensibly, by
form, and building technology, pulling back the veil of belief, we can
and also filtered through Wright’s see artifacts and the events out of
concepts of Nature, Democracy which they emerged in a more raw
and Freedom, and Holistic Design. and conscious manner, as a wholly
This results in a book that is divided Building Seagram new present.
into various parts (the core of Phyllis Lambert Lambert’s important contri-
which is Faith, Form, and Building Yale University Press, 2013 bution to architectural discourse,
Technology) each crosscut with 306 pages, 175 color and black and Building Seagram, is situated in none
Wright’s architectural principles. white illustrations of these camps yet is aligned with
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Geva’s analyses slice orthogonally. $65 (cloth) all. In the main, Lambert attempts
Thankfully, the author sums up as much as one can when one is
her research and observations in a In a time when an important both subject and object, to get the
cogent conclusion, which I suggest measure of success is determined story straight. We meet Lambert
you read before getting into the by how many seconds one stays the client, Lambert the archivist,
detailed slicing and dicing of themes on a web page and most online Lambert the apologist, Lambert the
and sections. Geva’s research, articles are never read past the first polemicist, Lambert the architect
analysis, thought, and reflection paragraph or two, it’s tempting to and urban designer, Lambert the
on Wright’s religious architecture wonder why we write, and for whom. critic, and Lambert the eyewit-
is prodigious and a significant Simply put, there seem to be more ness. Perhaps the most important
contribution to the field. reasons, today, to write history than contributions Lambert makes in a
Geva’s book reveals another, to read it. Phyllis Lambert begins book that should be on the shelf of
perhaps even more profound, aspect the penultimate chapter of Building any serious student of architecture
of Wright as an architect: he was not Seagram with the commonplace: “A is as a witness to history, one with a
afraid to talk about the divine in his view through the lens backward, the keen critical eye. As to the latter, her
architecture. The fact that he con- historical perspective often results contribution is not limited to archi-
sidered all of his architecture sacred, in the recognition of an entirely tecture alone but extends to culture,
no matter what the building’s func- new optic” (p. 194). As Lambert and the ethics of architecture, its
tion, might give some readers pause. asserts, at its best, a history and the potential to construct settings that
I find it courageous and inspiring theories upon which it is based, can support the civic life of a people in
that an architect saw his work so reward both author and reader with buildings and public spaces that rep-
connected to and expressive of a a new way of seeing. At a minimum, resent a people, and the concomitant
higher state of human consciousness. we write histories to disseminate demands of cultural stewardship.
Can you name a practicing architect new discoveries of documents or These notions may seem quaint
who thinks so today? monuments; to correct past errors today, yet they were at the core of
of scholarship, to put things right; to what was, and remains, a shocking
Michael J. Crosbie, FAIA, is defend and reify past choices for the display of modernity occupying a
Associate Dean of the College of present; or, as William Manchester city block on Park Avenue, between
Engineering, Technology, and suggests in his A World Lit Only Fifty-Second and Fifty-Third Streets.
Architecture and Chair of the by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the As starkly modern as it still looks
Department of Architecture at the Renaissance (1992), to create order today, both building and plaza were
University of Hartford. The editor where none seems to have existed. well received by a broad range of
of Faith & Form: The Interfaith Journal History is also, perforce, polemical, critics in 1958, in the main because
on Religion, Art, and Architecture, he has offered less in support of what has at its roots, Seagram was intended
published several books on religious been done but, rather, using the past as pro bono publico. As such, the mag-
architecture. to support an argument for what nanimity of Seagram and its plaza is
ought to be done in the future. This impossible to separate from Phyllis

122 Reviews
 Lambert’s; she was not only an eye- Luce famously coined in Time, “The Cambridge, Marcel Breuer and Le
witness to history, as she makes clear American Century.” That the site for Corbusier in Paris. But it was Pereira
throughout this first-person tale, her the Seagram corporate offices was & Luckman (with offices in Los
fingerprints are all over this artifact. not only located at the world’s com- Angeles and New York) who were
The difficulty of this book is also its mercial center but situated diagonally the first architects to make a specific
strength: it is impossible to separate from Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill’s proposal for Seagram. Lambert’s
the teller from the tale being told. Lever House (1952) plays an impor- detailed account in Chapter 2 of who
The Seagram Building notwithstand- tant part in this complex mosaic, might have designed Seagram pro-
ing, it is well-known that Lambert’s raising the stakes of the game. duces the same sort of reaction as
magnanimous vision of architecture’s It may be difficult for many read- when one reads that Ronald Reagan
role in society propelled her to allo- ers of Building Seagram to appreciate and Ann Sheridan were originally
cate much of her personal wealth to that when the Lever House opened cast to star in Casablanca. While it’s
establishing the Canadian Centre its doors in 1952, it was only the fascinating to imagine this block on
for Architecture (1979) in Montreal, third International Style tall building Park Avenue ornamented with what
to purchase vast holdings of books realized in the United States. The would have been Le Corbusier’s
and original documents housed in a construction of Pietro Belluschi’s only realized skyscraper, fortu-
building she commissioned, and to Equitable Life Building in Portland, nately Casablanca starred Bogart and
endow a chair at McGill University Oregon (1946), marked the first of its Bergman, and Mies (along with a
(held by Alberto Pérez-Gómez for type since the Philadelphia Savings remarkable team of designers and
the past two decades). It is this Fund Society (PSFS, 1932) build- managers) was tapped for Seagram.
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same quality that seems largely her ing by George Howe and William Building Seagram is neatly orga-
motivation as the official historian Lescaze, at Twelfth and Market nized into seven chapters (plus a
of this project. One would prefer if Streets in center city Philadelphia. “Portfolio”), bits of which readers
her role in this story were told by Indeed, as Lambert worked to may have previously encountered
someone less personally invested in choose the architect for Seagram, in such venues as Mies in America or
the matter. Yet, there is still plenty she visited the PSFS with Philip Mies in Berlin. The first two chap-
of time for that history to be writ- Johnson, and her time in the build- ters (“A Site and an Architect for
ten. For now, we have this history. ing had no small influence on her Seagram,” and “Mies van der Rohe’s
Moreover, it is a story that needs to own and Johnson’s attention to detail Ur-Building”) may prove the most
be told today, if for no other reason and materials, evinced in the inte- useful and interesting; here is the
than to recall a time when a multi- rior design and industrial outfitting backstory, the details of which will be
national corporation would invest of Seagram. As Bauhaus-influenced new territory for many. As it was for
a substantial portion of its wealth industrial design had not yet reached Mies, the telling of this tale is almost
for the wealth of a people, when the U.S. manufacturing in the early always about the details. Curiously,
values of private corporations (albeit 1930s, William Lescaze’s designs the more books and articles that are
publically held) and public institu- for PSFS’s fixtures and equipment written about Mies, the more remote
tions (albeit privately supported) (literally down to the hinges) were he seems. Lambert recounts Mies’s
could coincide to create something largely manufactured as one-offs. In typically arm’s-length involvement
of lasting cultural value. contrast, the redesign of industrially in the design of Seagram. Ensconced
Building Seagram is far more produced finishes and equipment for long hours in his smoke-filled
than a personal and highly privileged that Philip Johnson (and Mies to a temporary Manhattan office, Mies
recollection of much of what was lesser extent) designed for Seagram emerged largely to give support and
required to realize the now iconic quickly registered in American critiques. Beyond the broad con-
building and site. The author’s scope manufacturing, appearing in contem- ceptual strokes, Mies seems at his
ranges far beyond Ludwig Mies van porary advertisements as the building best red-lining the work of others.
der Rohe’s (and Philip Johnson’s) neared completion. Moreover, after the kerfuffle over his
design, exhuming the heretofore George Howe, who in 1954 was lack of a license to practice in New
unrelated fragments of Manhattan no longer Lescaze’s partner and York (discussed in a later chapter), he
building legislations, corporate had not yet assumed the chair of returned to Chicago in the midst of
intrigue, and high finance, to place in architecture at Yale, was one of sev- the design, leaving Philip Johnson and
perspective, as Manchester observed, eral architects under consideration Lambert in charge of this enormously
the related patterns out of which this for the Seagram commission. The complex and important project.
story emerges—bringing into focus short list included Louis I. Kahn Chapter 3, “Union of Building
the unprecedented transformation of in Philadelphia, Eero Saarinen and and Plaza in the Urban Landscape,”
a full city block on Park Avenue into a Minouri Yamaski in Michigan, Pietro is chockablock with the sort of
new midcentury paradigm of the tall Belluschi (then at MIT), Frank Lloyd material that is typically relegated
office building, built for what Henry Wright, Walter Gropius and TAC in to explanatory endnotes, as many

Reviews JAE 68: 1   123

 readers may grow weary, for exam- to any one problem but to all archi- of art that are not in the Seagram
ple, reading Lambert’s retelling of tectural problems which I approach” Building for reasons that range
Mies’s hypothetical relation to the (Mies in America, p. 391). Stimmung from Mark Rothko’s rage against
land reform movement in nine- was clearly one architectural prob- America’s cultural and mercantile
teenth- and early twentieth-century lem Mies chose not to approach. aristocracy (p. 162), to Brancusi’s
Germany (Wohnreform), along with Fortunately for twentieth-century ennui (p. 152), to the petty jealousy of
the habit of several Mies scholars architecture, what Lilly Reich did Picasso’s future wife, who apparently
who conflate correlation and causal- for Mies in Berlin during the late felt threatened by Lambert (p. 159).
ity when it comes to the relation 1920s and early 1930s, Johnson (and Rothko’s and Picasso’s commissions
of Mies to Schinkel. Here is the several other key designers and were both intended for the Four
uncritical retelling of how Seagram manufacturers) did for Mies at 375 Seasons, Brancusi’s for the Plaza,
is the realization of Mies’s early Park Avenue. For the patient reader, or “piazzetta,” as he called it (p. 152).
experimental Berlin-based work there is much to learn here—par- Fortunately, Picasso’s large stage
(1921–25) and a permutation of his ticularly for those who think that curtain, Le Tricorne (1919), made it
Schinkelesque program of meld- a Gesamtkunstwerk is, perforce, the into the Four Seasons Restaurant’s
ing interior and exterior; repetition work of an übermensch, or one “Picasso Alley,” as did Richard
is a sorry substitute for argument. supreme creative spirit. Moreover, it Lippolds’s ephemeral bronze rod
Yet, linear histories are convenient is a no less important lesson about sculptural groupings suspended
and often convincing—for example, the role of interior design in the from the ceiling of The Grill Room.
the one Albert Barr constructed in history of canonical modernism. The Seagram collection includes
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his seminal Cubism and Abstract Art Lambert demonstrates the complexi- (a different) Rothko, Miro, Robert
(1936), or Siegfried Giedion’s central ties and nuance required to make Delaunay, Franz Kline, Larry Rivers,
thesis (following Barr) in Space, Time, the interior design of this modern and many other last-century lumi-
and Architecture (1941). Yet, as Meyer masterpiece, and the exterior design naries. The piazzetta has been home
Schapiro explained in his critique of that houses it an icon—one that to a remarkable assortment of sculp-
Barr, “Nature of Abstract Art (1937),” does not end at the front door. Yet, tures, from the fifth-century stone
these sorts of histories depend on after detailed descriptions of the totemic Olmec Head (Tenochtilan)
redacting much of the social com- design innovations and profound role to Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk
plexities out of which a work of art materials and materiality play in the (1963–67), to Jean Dubuffet’s Milord
or architecture emerges. Lambert’s construction of the interior Stimmung la Charmarre (1973–74), and instal-
account of the design, construc- (specifically The Four Seasons lations by Michael Heizer (1977–78)
tion, and reception of the Seagram Restaurant), Lambert inexplicably and Richard Long (2000), all of which
Building provides precisely the kind concludes: “Philip Johnson did not was made possible only through
of context for which Shapiro so have to struggle with tectonics: he the intercession of Lambert, Henry
effectively argued. had only to conjure up an interior Moore, and Mies himself, convincing
In “Light: Philip Johnson’s environment within the space of Edgar M. Bronfman that a perma-
Stimmung,” Lambert unintentionally Mies’s structure” (p. 149). It’s dif- nent sculpture “would detract from
demonstrates how little Mies con- ficult to fathom Lambert’s take on the quality of the plaza and the build-
cerned himself with the relation of “tectonics.” Nonetheless, Johnson’s ing. ... Fine sculpture on the plaza
inside and outside, particularly for Stimmung, his project within a at times (and not often) has a differ-
Seagram. Here we encounter critical project, succeeds not only as scenog- ent quality, it marks an occasion. ...
information and insight into Philip raphy but also owing to his material A permanent sculpture no matter
Johnson’s role in designing and over- choices and keen attention to the how fine would create a formality
seeing the outfitting of the building’s interplay of spatial sequences, their and insistency inimical to the serene
interior. Stimmung, or “atmosphere,” material presence, and the often gos- environment that changes itself”
is precisely what seems to have samer boundary between quotidian (p. 182). Lambert demonstrates not
interested the American Mies least, interior finishes (such as curtains) only the immensely complex and
largely because of the multiple over- and unique site-specific works of art. drawn-out task it is to achieve a
lapping contingencies one must We learn of Lambert’s decades- Gesamtkunstwerk as extraordinary as is
address when designing interiors. He long direction of (and influence Seagram but also the no less arduous
famously explained in 1960: “My con- over) the Seagram Corporation’s task of keeping it so.
cept and approach to [designing] the collection of twentieth-century art In the final two chapters,
Seagram Building was no different in “Architecture and Art Allied.” Not Lambert looks back at the unin-
from any other building that I might limited to private offices, most was tended consequences of the new
build. My idea, or better, direction, in on display in the rotating exhibitions architectural and urban standards set
which I go is toward a clear structure that Lambert curated. We also learn by Seagram’s new building and plaza.
and construction—this applies not the list of great artists and works Two discrete parts comprise “Ironies

124 Reviews
 in the Public Life of Architecture: As with all histories, Building ground plan out of this bit of vulgar-
Regulations and the Modern Seagram is an instauration of sorts. ity which they have dared to present
Metropolis”: the multiyear battle the Lambert adds several layers to this to you. (p. 242)
company waged against what it con- anamnesis—the most striking of
sidered unfair taxation by the city and which are her detailed personal Largely in response to her “Dear
state of New York, and Lambert’s own renderings of events that would Daddy letter,” in short order
battle, first for a proper architectural otherwise have been lost to his- Lambert was called back from
education following her experience tory. Appendix A is a photographic Paris by SB and placed in charge of
as client and curator of Seagram, and reproduction of a 5,000-word letter choosing the building’s architect.
as an urban designer, establishing (including handwritten annota- In conjunction with Seagram’s Lou
her own firm, Pier Associates, after tions, diagrams, and a quote from Crandall, by the end of 1954 they
graduating from IIT. As practitioner, John Ruskin) to Samuel Bronfman, “became, virtually, the clients [of the
Lambert came full circle, return- referred to as “SB” throughout the project]” (p. 37).
ing to the unintended irony of the book, with the salutation, “Dear Building Seagram is yet another
Seagram Corporation being taxed on Daddy,” in which she draws a clear beautiful book from Yale University
the square footage they could have line in the sand of 375 Park Avenue. Press. Produced during an age
built but chose not to, in order to Writing from Paris in June 1954, of digital reproduction in which
create “prestige.” By the early 1970s, where she was “working as an artist,” such artifacts are increasingly rare,
what began as an argument over Lambert registers her chagrin at Building Seagram weighs in at 306
Seagram’s “Conspicuous Waste… the prospect of Pereira & Luckman pages (the final sixty-six of which
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designed to impress observers with designing the building, to which she are appendices, endnotes, credits,
the owner’s ‘pecuniary strength’” (p. responds: “NO NO NO NO, NO.” In and indices). Elegantly designed
197), had transformed into the drive occasional bursts of hyperbole, she by Jeff Wincapaw, it is a relatively
to establish and develop air rights in explains to her father the oxymo- little book as Mies monographs
high-density areas such as Chicago’s ron of modernizing the renaissance go (compared to Mies in Berlin
Loop and midtown Manhattan. In and why the first proposed design and Mies in America). Moreover, its
particular, Lambert examines the by Pereira & Luckman is not only graphic design and physical pro-
implications of New York’s 1961 bad for Seagram Incorporated but portions imbue Seagram-the-book
Zoning Regulation. With David Fix, bad for the country, and simply bad with qualities we associate with
Lambert returned to the potential architecture: a caricature of a futur- Seagram-the-building.
development (which was huge) of istic set design out of Flash Gordon. As the unbridled diatribe of the
the Seagram property in order to After a long imaginary conversation “Dear Daddy letter” demonstrates,
create a planned development with between two “country ‘bumpkins’” Building Seagram begins and ends as
nominal impact on the existing urban (p. 31) who are mystified by the pro- memoir. Lambert explains: “This
and architectural quality of the site. posed Pereira & Luckman building is a story that depends on my own
The final chapter plows through the (and probably no less mystified that enormous bank of memories, sys-
complexities of what happens when they have been plucked out of the tematically accessed and reflected in
and how a high-visibility cultural backwoods and plopped on Park the light of the archive—my files and
icon is sold. Seagram and Lambert Avenue), she asks: papers and other documents…oral
demonstrated vision and resolve histories and interviews, and the writ-
to create a unique urban condition Where [in their project] is there any ings and commentary of Mies [van
ornamented with the highest-quality sense of noble well proportioned der Rohe] and Philip [Johnson] them-
postwar architecture; here we learn building which delights people in a selves” (p. 10). Bracketed between
what it took for it to remain so, even democratic society, ... what could those self-reflective covers are his-
after the property was sold. Noble be ... uglier to boot? ... Where is tory, hagiography, interpretation,
stewardship notwithstanding, consis- there any humanization of the documentation, and, most impor-
tent with standard business practices monster, the sky scraper [sic]? It tantly to future scholars, Lambert’s
based on real estate depreciation, crushes people, makes them feel firsthand accounts of this enormously
after twenty years it was time to sell. insignificant and hopeless. There is important event in the history of
In the final chapter we follow the not ONE REDEEMING FEATURE. twentieth-century canonical modern
historical arc: what began as an inno- It is a CHEAP product of a mind architecture and urban design.
vation ends as preservation. Here that has learnt to approach every-
is the story of what happens when thing from the point of view of George Dodds is the Alvin and Sally
the avant-garde transforms from Sensationalism. It makes me too Beaman Professor at the University
future tense to the past perfect: when sick to go on but just a last word of Tennessee, College of Architecture
landmark decisions transform into to Messers Pereira and Luckman. and Design, where he is the Associate
landmark properties. I defy them to make a plausible Dean for Academic Affairs and

Reviews JAE 68: 1   125

 Research and Chair of the Graduate the region. Unfinished Modernizations, text. These contextualizing images
Architecture Program. He has taught and the multiyear, multicountry, are absent from the other recent
at several universities, practiced multi-institutional research collec- photographic monographs of Eastern
widely, and was a fellow at Harvard’s tive of which it is a product, provides European Socialist architecture.
Dumbarton Oaks. He has published the platform for the conversation These other books also lack
Building Desire: On the Barcelona Pavilion Kulić and Mrduljaš are introducing Modernism In-Between’s balance
and coedited Body and Building: Essays to a broader, international audi- between text and image, and
on the Changing Relation of Body and ence with Modernism In-Between. indeed the correspondence estab-
Architecture. From 2006 to 2010 he was The two projects are deeply inter- lished between them in which they
the Executive Editor of the Journal of twined: the companion exhibition reinforce one another toward the
Architectural Education. to Unfinished Modernizations, which articulation of a specific argument
Mrduljaš and Kulić cocurated, fea- about the architecture of Socialist
tures many of Wolfgang Thaler’s Yugoslavia. In the text, Kulić and
photographs that are published in Mrduljaš carefully parse out a series
Modernism In-Between. The exhibi- of themes exploring how Yugoslav
tion has been well received at the architecture mediated between
Architekturzentrum Wien in Vienna, various conflicting forces, none
Swiss Museum of Architecture in of which are reduced to simplistic
Basel, and major venues in most of dichotomies. Kulić and Mrduljaš
the Yugoslav successor states. have commented on the symbiotic
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Though there is little schol- relationship between their own criti-

arly literature on the architecture cal understanding of the sites they
of Socialist Yugoslavia, Modernism analyze and Thaler’s photographs.2
In-Between does join a collection of The collection of images Thaler took
recent monographs of art photog- on numerous trips to the region
raphy of mid-twentieth-century over the course of three years, and
Modernism In-Between: architecture in Eastern Europe. particularly his variety of views,
The Mediatory Architectures Among the most familiar of these led the authors to reassess some
of Socialist Yugoslavia photography books are Till Briegleb of their assumptions. In Modernism
Vladimir Kulić, Maroje Mrduljaš, and et al.,’s Roman Bezjak: Socialist In-Between, the photographic essays
Wolfgang Thaler Modernism, Frederic Chaubin’s Cosmic alternate with the textual essays,
Jovis Verlag, 2012 Communist Constructions Photographed, allowing readers to interrogate the
272 pages, 304 color and black and and Herta Hurnaus, Benjamin authors’ suppositions for themselves.
white images Konrad, and Maik Novotny’s Kulić and Mrduljaš begin by
$40.00 (cloth) Eastmodern: Architecture and Design acknowledging the cliché nature of
of the 1960s and 1970s in Slovakia.1 their premise—that the architecture
Modernism In-Between: The Mediatory However—unlike the sensationalist of Yugoslavia is defined by its in-
Architectures of Socialist Yugoslavia orientalism of Chaubin’s simultane- betweenness. They go on to reveal
provides a welcome critical introduc- ously ominous and pathetic images how this was indeed manifested in
tion to a topic seldom addressed in of Brutalist oddities, and unlike the a variety of overlapping but distinct
English-language publications—the bleak ordinariness of Bezjak’s eye- ways that demonstrate the appropri-
architecture of Socialist Yugoslavia, a level, mid-distance shots of everyday ateness of this lens for understanding
state that existed from the mid-1940s familiar gray buildings against gray both Socialist-era Yugoslavia and its
until the early 1990s. skies—Thaler’s photographs in built environment. Both mediated/
The authors, Vladimir Kulić Modernism In-Between are consider- floated/existed between superpow-
and Maroje Mrduljaš, also col- ably more architectural. They include ers and blocs, between ideologies,
laborated on the edited volume a combination of interiors and exte- between internal identities, and
Unfinished Modernizations: Between riors as well as overviews of buildings between temporal focuses. After
Utopia and Pragmatism (2012), which within their contexts and focused the thematic introduction that
was published by the Croatian views of specific spaces. This variety establishes this overarching theme,
Architects Association and is less and multiplicity allows for a more each chapter explores a different
easily obtained. That volume is nuanced and critical understand- mediation by enumerating differ-
an extensive collection of well- ing of architectural relationships ent strategies employed by different
illustrated essays on Socialist-era and ideas, especially in combination designers and by close, detailed
architecture and urbanism in the with the images of drawings, models, descriptions of architectural exam-
former Yugoslavia contributed by period photographs, and unbuilt ples of each. The chapter “Between
practitioners and academics from projects that accompany the book’s Worlds” addresses architecture

126 Reviews