Breuer's Blockbuster

THE CITY

The American Institute of Architects is presenting its Gold Medal to Marcel Breuer this week. It may be a good thing this is happening in Portland, Ore., 2,445 miles away from Manhattan, where such an award ceremony right now would be sure to bring out pickets. Why would anybody want to picket Breuer, a kindly man of 66 and a distinguished architect whose Whitney Museum is one of the finest things that any designer has done for Manhattan in years? Because last week Breuer unveiled his plans for a $100 million, 55-story office building--to be placed on top of Grand Central Terminal.

"It's the wrong building in the wrong place at the wrong time." wailed the chairman of New York City's planning commission, Donald H. Elliott, who is helpless to do anything about it since the project conforms with zoning requirements. Urbanologists pointed out that the new building would press an estimated 12,000 new office workers into the already overpressed Grand Central area. But New Yorkers' basic objections were esthetic, though few people exactly articulated this, or could have if they tried. A certain esthetic pleasure used to come from the sight of the Grand Central complex--from the north, a stubby tower with a clock at its architectural nave; from the south, a Beaux Arts Eclectic facade crowned by monumental sculpture that nobody studied but everybody remembered. From either side, it was an ornamental point in the city's stark grid, a recognizable feature amidst its towering but all-too-featureless walls. But five years ago, the 59-story Pan Am Building was built just south of 45th Street, blocking off for all time the vista south from Park Avenue.

No one is more aware of this situation than Breuer himself, who admits that he would have refused a commission to design Pan Am. But he also recognizes economic imperatives and esthetic realities. With the Pan Am Building, the vistas were gone anyway; the railroad still needed money; and the airspace above the station was still some of the most valuable real estate in Manhattan. Said Breuer after accepting the commission: "My feeling is this space will have to be utilized sooner or later. If so, it is important that it is utilized in a good way."

What Breuer has produced is, as the New York Times's Critic Ada Louise Huxtable concedes, "a truly remarkable shotgun wedding between sentiment and speculative economics. The trick is pulled off with striking technical elan. Mr. Breuer has done an excellent job with a dubious undertaking, which is like saying it would be great if it weren't so awful." The economics consists of the $3,000,000 annual rent that British Developer Morris Saady has agreed to pay to the Penn Central for the next 50 years. The technical elan is an ingenious structural system designed to spare the terminal's fa?ade and its magnificent main concourse ("one of New York's last great spaces," Breuer calls it). To achieve this, Breuer has planted a row of elevators enclosed by massive walls between fac,ade and concourse, forming a kind of central trunk. Not until this trunk has cleared the terminal's roof, 158 ft. above street level, does the building proper begin, its entire 55-story steel frame floated cantilever-fashion off the trunk on giant trusses. As a result, though Breuer's building will have four floors fewer than Pan Am, it will actually be about 150 ft. taller. For the outside Breuer deliberately chose an uninflected surface of cast stone and granite, which would clash as little as possible with the Beaux Arts fac,ade.

Breuer has given careful study to the problem posed by the extra load of people that his building will contribute to Manhattan's midtown hub. He proposes to widen the sidewalk and add two new subway entrances as well as a new drive-in entrance for taxis. He claims that these will more than compensate for the additional population, though it is a mystery how freer traffic flow will really help when subways and restaurants in the area are already hopelessly overcrowded.

Breuer's building is undoubtedly better, or at least less offensive, than alternative designs the railroad submitted to possible developers. But the overriding problem remains. The U.S.'s urban profile expresses powerfully the enormous thrust of U.S. energy. What its architecture has not yet discovered--perhaps because the society has not discovered it--is an esthetic of communal grace.

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