Hate Your Soulless Office Tower? Blame The Seagram Building

Mies van der Rohe's famed New York City skyscraper is the mid-century modernist equivalent of the gigantic hit record.

First, the obligatory disclaimer: Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building is unquestionably a great piece of architecture. But this slick glass tower, which rises 39 stories over Park Avenue in New York, is also something else slightly more peculiar: the underwhelming masterpiece. Loved, admired, worshipped and revered by the architecture profession, it has become a building whose virtues need some explanation, especially to the uninitiated.

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