The Pan Am Building and the Shattering of the Modernist Dream [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING]

Clausen, Meredith L.

Verlag: The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachussets, 2005

Fine condition heavy oversized blue cloth boards with orange spine lettering. Includes Author Dedicaiton; Preliminary Page Quote; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Notes; Works Cited; Illustration Credits and Index. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs and black-and-white photographic frontispiece. "The Pan Am Building was conceived in 1958, several years after Ginsberg's "Howl," and opened five years later. Designed by Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi, two of the nation's most highly respected modernist architects, it was the largest corporate office tower in the world at the time. With its finely textured, boradly faceted glass and concrete walls rising fifty-nine stories abouve the street, spanning the full width of Park Avenue just north of the Grand Central Terminal and cutting off its vista, it was also the most controversial. The controversy over the building began, in fact, well before Gropius and Belluschi were brought in as designers. As early as 1953, concerns had been raised about the explosive growth of New York City, which after World War II was rapidly becoming the most important metropolis - politically, economically, and culturally - in the world. The expansion was especially apparent on Park Avenue, where a spurt of gleaming new, modern, flush-surfaced glass and steel tall office buildings was rapidly replacing gracious elegant masonry luxury hotels and apartments dating mostly from the 1920s that by the 1950s were deemed old-fashioned and uneconomical. Frederick Woodbridge, a New York architect who was later to become president of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), in an address to the Association of Architects in Quebec, spoke of these impressive new moderist buildings. Marveling at the progressiveness of their sleek, modern formes, he pointed out the drawback; Visually and functionally they differed radically from the old palazzo-inspired residential buildings they were replacing, and as their numbers grew, they threatened to strangle the street. " - from the beginning of chapter one. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 007314

Bibliografische Details

Titel: The Pan Am Building and the Shattering of ...
Verlag: The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachussets
Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
Einband: Hardcover
Zustand: Fine
Zustand des Schutzumschlags: No Jacket
Auflage: 1st Edition