Gordon Bunshaft

Gordon Bunshaft (May 9, 1909 – August 6, 1990) was an American architect, a leading proponent of modern design in the mid-twentieth century. A partner in Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Bunshaft joined the firm in 1937 and remained with it for more than 40 years. His notable buildings include Lever House in New York, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the National Commercial Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 140 Broadway (Marine Midland Grace Trust Co.), and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Branch Bank in New York, the first post-war "transparent" bank on the East Coast.

Early life Bunshaft was born in Buffalo, New York, to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, and attended Lafayette High School. His parents, David and Yetta, were first cousins who had immigrated to the United States a year prior to Gordon's birth. A sickly child, he "frequently drew while in bed," his New York Times obituary notes. "A doctor who admired his pictures of houses told his mother that her son should become an architect."

In 1937, he joined Skidmore, Owings & Merrill [SOM], where he remained for 42 years (with a hiatus for his service in the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II) until he retired in 1979. Bunshaft's early influences included Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. "Mies was the Mondrian of architecture, and Le Corbusier was the Picasso," he told the Oral History interviewer.

First and foremost among the iconic modernist buildings he designed while at SOM is the renowned Lever House. Completed in 1952, it was New York's "first major commercial structure with a glass curtain-wall (only the United Nations Secretariat preceded it)," notes the architecture critic Paul Goldberger, "and it burst onto the stuffy, solid masonry wall of Park Avenue like a vision of a new world.”

Other memorable buildings by Bunshaft include the Manufacturers Trust Company Building (1954), the first bank building in the United States to be built in the International Style; the Pepsi-Cola Building (now 500 Park Avenue), completed in 1959; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, completed in 1963; 140 Broadway (formerly known as the Marine Midland Building), topped out in 1966; the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas (1971); the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. (1974); and the National Commercial Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (1983).

In an interview for the Chicago Architects Oral History Project, Bunshaft reflected on the Beinecke. "I happen to love books, especially bindings and things, and I thought it ought to be a treasure house and it ought to express that by having a large number of beautiful books displayed behind glass," he told Betty J. Blum in 1990.

The structure would be covered with onyx and these big panels would be translucent onyx. It came from my seeing what I thought was onyx in a Renaissance-type palace in Istanbul. … The whole idea of onyx…is because books cannot be exposed to direct sunlight. … [Onyx] admits soft light, but no sunlight, so it’s like being in a cathedral. In ancient times, they used two materials, onyx and alabaster, for small windows. [When onyx of sufficient quality proved impossible to acquire, Bunshaft compromised on a stratum of white marble “that was translucent.”] When the sun pours in, it’s quite nice with the rich books. Stewart's extensive remodelling stalled amid an acrimonious planning dispute with a neighbour. In 2005, she sold the house to textile magnate Donald Maharam, who described the house as "decrepit and largely beyond repair" and had it demolished. The architectural historian Nicholas Adams, author of Gordon Bunshaft and SOM: Building Corporate Modernism, has lamented the demolition of the Bunshaft house as "the greatest loss" of all the architect's projects that have succumbed to the wrecking ball. "[He] and his wife Nina ... never had children and so their home was not designed for a family so much as it was for art," said Adams, in a 2019 interview. "It had his Miròs, Picassos, Moores, and Dubuffets and was surrounded by a remarkable landscape created by [Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s] Joanna Diman."

Awards and honors Bunshaft was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters and was the recipient of numerous other honors and awards. In 1955, he received the Brunner Prize of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and, in 1984, its gold medal. He also received the American Institute of Architects Twenty-five Year Award for Lever House in 1980 and in 1988 the Pritzker Architecture Prize. In 1958, he was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Associate and became a full member in 1959. From 1963 to 1972, he was a member of the Commission of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C. for which he had nominated himself, the terse architect gave the shortest speech of any winner in the award's history:

In 1928, I entered the MIT School of Architecture and started my architectural trip. Today, 60 years later, I've been given the Pritzker Architecture Prize for which I thank the Pritzker family and the distinguished members of the selection committee for honoring me with this prestigious award. It is the capstone of my life in architecture. That's it.

Bunshaft was a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art. He also received the Medal of Honor of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. 1952 – Manhattan House – New York City 1953 – Manufacturers Trust Company Building – New York City 1956 – Ford World Headquarters – Dearborn, Michigan, with Natalie de Blois 1956 – Consular Agency of the United States, Bremen – Bremen, Germany 1957 – Connecticut General Life Insurance Company Headquarters – Bloomfield, Connecticut 1955 – Istanbul Hilton – Istanbul, Turkey, with Sedad Hakkı Eldem 1958 – Reynolds Metals Company International Headquarters – Richmond, Virginia 1960 – 500 Park Avenue (Pepsi-Cola Company World Headquarters) – New York City 1961 – 28 Liberty Street (Chase Manhattan Bank) – New York City 1962 – CIL House – Montreal, Quebec 1962 – Albright-Knox Art Gallery addition – Buffalo, New York 1963 – Travertine House – East Hampton, New York 1963 – Beinecke Library – Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 1965 – American Republic Insurance Company Headquarters – Des Moines, Iowa 1965 – Banque Lambert – Brussels, Belgium 1965 – Heinz Corporate Headquarters – Hillingdon, England 1965 – New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (interiors) – New York City 1965 – Hayes Park Central & South Buildings – Hayes, United Kingdom 1965 – Warren P. McGuirk Alumni Stadium – University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 1967 – 140 Broadway – New York City 1970 – American Can Company Headquarters – Greenwich, Connecticut 1971 – Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum – Austin, Texas 1972 – Carborundum Center – Niagara Falls, New York 1972 – Carlton Centre – Johannesburg, South Africa 1973 – New York City Convention and Exhibition Center (not built) – New York City 1973 – Uris Hall, Cornell University – Ithaca, New York 1974 – Solow Building – 9 West 57th Street, New York City 1974 – W. R. Grace Building – New York City 1974 – Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden – Washington, D.C. 1983 – National Commercial Bank – Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Gallery

Personal life In 1943, Bunshaft married Nina Wayler (d. 1994). Avid collectors of contemporary art, the couple owned many major pieces, including works by Joan Miró, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Léger and Noguchi.

Nicholas Adams, the architectural historian and author of Gordon Bunshaft and SOM: Building Corporate Modernism, characterizes Bunshaft as "gruff, grumpy, crude, and stubborn," noting, "When pressed about his architecture, he offered staccato descriptive explanations. At dinner parties he would turn his back (and rotate his chair) so that he wouldn’t have to talk to an unappealing neighbor. 'I suppose you do that postmodernist shit,' he reportedly told a young employee recently moved to SOM’s New York office from Washington, D.C. He joked that the only reason his name was not on the masthead at SOM was that the initials would be S.O.B."

Yet Adams discovered, in Bunshaft's private correspondence with artists whose work he admired a more vulnerable side of Bunshaft. "His extensive correspondence with [ Henry Moore and Jean Dubuffet], preserved at the Avery Library, is both playful and witty, describing cheerful conversations, and looking forward to further jovial meetings," says Adams. "In November 1972, he wrote tenderly to Dubuffet after the installation of his Group of Three Trees in front of Chase Manhattan in New York: 'I enjoyed your visit here tremendously. I felt that although I have known you, off and on, for many years, this is the first time we really became closer.'"

A man of few words, he famously said he wanted his buildings to speak for themselves.