Bonus: 270 Park Avenue and why renovation is a better use of resources than demolition and replacement

From the archives, an early look at a problematic project.

Lobby, Union Carbide Building

270 Park Avenue was the site of the Union Carbide Building, the biggest building designed by a woman architect, the biggest planned demolition of a building, and a modernist gem. I was looking for my earlier posts written about it for an upcoming lecture and found one that was taken down from Treehugger, so I am putting up here.

The building was demolished to build a much bigger one, just in time for a glut in office space and layoffs in the industry.

It was demolished even though it had been renovated to LEED platinum in 2011, which means most of it other than the basic structure was less than ten years old at time of demolition.

It was demolished to make way for the clunkiest and ugliest building Norman Foster ever designed; just look at the base, how it meets the ground, in these New York Yimby photos.

It was demolished, but should not be forgotten; it is an object lesson in why we fight to save existing buildings and avoid upfront carbon emissions. Or as Ada Louise Huxtable noted about another building demolition in 1957: "One of NY's best buildings replaced by one of its worst."

From the archives, October 2018:

Renovation Is Always a Better Use of Resources Than Demolition and Replacement

That's what Alexandra Lange says about the possible loss of New York's Union Carbide Building.

Years ago some people thought that the architecture of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill was derivative of a famous modernist, and they were nicknamed "the Three Blind Mies". But many of their buildings have aged well, including the former Union Carbide Building. It was designed by Natalie de Blois and Gordon Bunshaft, and Alexandra Lange, like a lot of other architectural critics, is shocked that it might be torn down to build a bigger building. She is also surprised that it wasn't a designated landmark. She writes in Curbed:

Union Carbide is a superlative example of what Ada Louise Huxtable named “The Park Avenue School of Architecture” in 1957: sleek, shiny buildings that to her seemed like the city shaking off masonry, somnolence, the past, and marching up Park into the future. “In a surprise shift,” she wrote, “elegance has moved from domestic to professional life, from the apartment house to the office building.”

© SOM/ Mario Salvadori, Natalie de Blois, and Philip Johnson.

It is also an important monument to the role of women in architecture and the talent of Natalie Griffin de Blois. The late, brilliant Detlef Mertins interviewed her in 2006 where she explains how she ended up at Skidmore; she was with another firm with offices upstairs, where another male architect was hitting on her.

NdB: He was very fond of me, but he was not encouraged. So he went to Mr. Ketchum and told him that he just couldn’t work with me there. Mr. Ketchum called me over to his desk. We were all in one room. He said he was sorry, I’d have to leave. Just like that. Of course, I hadn’t experienced a shock like that before.

DM: You were just starting. You had been an excellent student, were doing good work, and suddenly...

NdB: It all happened within a day. He said, “Well, I’ll call up Mr. Skidmore. He’s downstairs — see if he needs anybody.” So he called up Skidmore and told me to go down there. There was no, “Sorry to see you go,” or anything like that. Just “Pack up your things and move downstairs.” So that’s how I got to Skidmore.

Buildings have so many stories to tell, they are so much more than just steel and glass and embodied energy. Justin Davidson of New York Magazine writes that "the Union Carbide Building deserves to continue existing, not because it was in the vanguard of a movement with a dubious urban legacy, but because it’s among the finest of its kind."

Or we can just quote Carl Elefante: "the greenest building is the one already standing."

Fortune Magazine/via