One Liberty Plaza (originally U.S. Steel Building)

Abstract

THE SKYWARD trend of thought,” as the critic Thomas A. P. van Leeuwen refers to the evolution of skyscraper design, periodically hits a dead end and must be reimagined. The U.S. Steel Building is the endgame of Mies’s reductionism, just as the 1915 Equitable Building catercorner across Broadway represents the exhaustion of the eclectic style. The two behemoths squaring off across Broadway have much in common; both buildings make no bones about being raw containers of office space through the sheer multiplication of layers.