Seagram Building

Abstract

ALTHOUGH GORDON Bunshaft designed the first all-glass curtainwall building six years earlier just catercorner across Park Avenue, the Seagram Building remains the iconic glass box. Here was the magister delivering a seminar on his architecture of pure volume, structure, transparency, and reflection, and his sorcerer’s apprentice Philip Johnson, completing the vision right down to the doorknobs. It was the most expensive building of its day, costing $36 million in addition to the $5-million land acquisition, and was the first building in the world with floor-to-ceiling glass walls.