When Will the Seagram Building Fall Down?
In May, Chatterbox asked Vincent Scully, the eminent (now retired) Yale
architecture historian, whether public buildings of the mid-to-late
20 th century were less durable than public buildings that predate
the 20 th century. Of course they
are, he said. Now Scully has penned a New York Times Magazine piece on this topic. In the
last of the Times Magazine 's special issues on the millennium, Scully
writes,
Our steel-frame and curtain-wall skyscrapers are major symbols of our
age, but there is every reason to surmise they won't be here for long. Their
life expectancy is 50 years or so, and that assumes assiduous
maintenance.
Reading this, Chatterbox was chilled to the bone. If Scully is right,
Chatterbox realized, that means New York's Seagram
Building has only a decade or two to go before it falls over. Thinking
about that made Chatterbox very blue. Even though Mies van der Rohe and Philip
Johnson's landmark building has inspired a host of ugly imitations (including
the Martin Luther King
Memorial Library in Washington, D.C.--also designed by Mies--which
essentially is the Seagram Building knocked on its side), Chatterbox has a
strong attachment to the Seagram Building. It was born the same year Chatterbox
was, 1958. Chatterbox's maternal grandfather worked for a company that supplied
the bronze used in its handsome spandrels, mullions, and I-beams. And when
Chatterbox was a wee cube, Pappy Chatterbox had an office in the Seagram
Building. Chatterbox is far from the only person with a strong attachment to
the skyscraper; in an essay in an earlier millennium issue of the Times
Magazine , Herbert Muschamp proclaimed the Seagram Building "my choice as
the millennium's most important building."
Eventually, Chatterbox got sufficiently worked up thinking about the
possibility that the Seagram Building might fall down that he phoned Scully,
who reassured Chatterbox that when he wrote those words in the Times
piece he wasn't thinking of the Seagram building. "They take good care of
that," he said. (Among other things, the bronze is oiled annually.) "If you
take good care of them, they can last for quite awhile." This seemed somewhat
at odds with Scully's written remark about assuming "assiduous maintenance,"
but Chatterbox decided to let that go. Instead, he asked precisely when one
could expect the Seagram Building to fall down. Scully answered that he
didn't know.
Chatterbox next phoned the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of
America-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF),
which bought the Seagram Building from Seagram's in 1980. Chatterbox read the
troubling passage from Scully's Times Magazine piece to Philip
DiGennaro, managing director for TIAA-CREF's mortgage and real estate division.
"You can tell [Scully] I am offering, and tenants are accepting, leases in
excess of 15 years," DiGennaro answered. "That building represents the finest
current construction, not construction for its day and age." He added
(without my asking) that the computers that now run the elevators and the
heating systems and whatnot are all fully Y2K compliant. Yes, but how long
will the building keep standing there? "This building was constructed of
materials that should last more than a lifetime if you and I are going to live
to be 80 years old." More than 80 years? Chatterbox thought. That
doesn't seem especially long. Finally, Chatterbox asked: Will the Seagram
Building make it to the year 3,000? "We're scheduling the 3,000 millennium
party right now," DiGennaro assured Chatterbox, with a chuckle. But by then, of
course, he wasn't taking Chatterbox very seriously.
