I grew up during the Mad Men era only blocks away from Madison Avenue in midtown Manhattan where the television show took place. Buildings from that time period are now mostly taken for granted, mainly the early Modernist glass boxes that have now populated urban centers around the globe. So taken for granted are they that we have now forgotten how unique they were when they began to appear, especially on lower Park Avenue. Mies Van der Rohe's Seagrams Building and SOM's Lever House, the PepsiCo Building and Union Carbide, had a level of clarity in form and in some cases humanism in their foot print. Now cheap glass boxes dot the landscape everywhere and tarnish the representation of the originals. Why do cheap imitations end up representing what the great originals started? J.P. Morgan announced this year that they will demolish the Union Carbide building, designed chiefly by Natalie de Blois with guidance from Gordon Bunschaft the architect of the Lever House and PepsiCo. Are we too blind to see what we will lose by letting this happen? Natalie de Blois should be honored for her achievement. I remember once at night back in the seventies seeing this building illuminated - the light coming from the ground floor emphasized a sense of levity, like it was floating. I will miss an important anchor of my childhood upbringing.
