BUT HEY YOU’RE ALRIGHT
There’s been a wave of resistance to the demolition of 270 Park, the Union Carbide Building, a 52-floor office tower from 1960 by SOM. Its current owner J P Morgan Chase plan to replace it with another tower 20 floors higher. Architectural critics believe that 270 is one of the city’s finest mid-century works. They also note, irrelevantly, that it was designed by associate partner Nathalie de Blois, an accomplished and undersung woman. They accuse the building’s current owner of profiteering, as they maximize the value of their midtown lot. And they call out Union Carbide, the building‘s original owner, for grossly negligent operations. It all makes for melodramatic press.
There’s no question that 270 Park is a handsome building. As with Lever House, another SOM tower completed eight years earlier, it’s broken into two different-sized volumes, with a dramatic street-level setback. Its facade has striking ornamental vertical mullions, echoing those at the Seagrams Tower, that stretch from the bottom of its “parlor” floor to its parapet. And its lustrous curtain wall panels – mirror black at the transoms and night blue at the windows – give it an unusual sense of gravity.
But 270 Park pales when compared to these two other iconic towers, just a few blocks north, that preside over Park Avenue like gods. The massing at 270 is sedate compared to the still-astounding floating slab at Lever House. And its mullions are clumsily overscaled compared to the slender stems at Seagrams. 720 Park can’t even compete favorably with 740 Park, its northern neighbor, a 1961 tower by Emery Roth, with a syncopated facade of cast concrete frames.
Why has the discussion about 720 focused on morals rather than pragmatics? Razing a structure this large is a colossal waste of materials. There’s talk of reusing pieces of its steel frame, but coordinating this will slow demolition and might not be cost-effective. If the building’s floor plates don’t suit the bank’s needs, why don’t they remake them, opening them vertically and adding ramps and mezzanines? And if the building’s footprint is too small, why not secure other adjacent buildings to make a midtown campus? Or find another lot on which to build a colossus?
I hope 270 Park remains. Not because it’s beautiful, but because it might make sense.