Skyscraper Museum | AT&T Building
Early tonight — Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 6:00 p.m. — I watched the latest webinar hosted by the Skyscraper Museum, AT&T Building: Philip Johnson and the Postmodern Skyscraper. Previous webinars hosted by Skyscraper Museum and appear on this blog were The Great American Transit Disaster, CBS Headquarters, and Australia Square. The talk was led by Alan Ritchie and Scott Johnson (no relation to Philip Johnson), both of whom worked on the AT&T project. Ritchie was picked by Philip Johnson soon after arriving in New York City from England as a young designer, while Scott Johnson went to New York City to be hired by Johnson after seeing preliminary drawings for the AT&T building on the front page of The New York Times.
Scott Johnson began the talk by describing other buildings designed by Philip Johnson. For real estate investment company Hines Interests, he designed the “Lipstick Building” at 885 Third Avenue in New York City, which opened in 1986. He built his own Glass House in New Canaan, CT, which I first learned about during the Culturally Curious talk Revolutionary Design: Modern Architecture in New England. He collaborated with other architects and designers, including Mies van der Rohe, to construct the Seagram Building at 375 Park Avenue in New York City, which opened in 1958 and formerly held the Four Season restaurant. Scott Johnson described Philip Johnson many other designs created with his business partner, John Burgee, which included:
- All-glass IDS Center of Minneapolis, MN in 1973
- Pennzoil Place of Houston, TX in 1976
- Candle-like 101 California of San Francisco, CA in 1982
- Dutch Gothic inspired Republic Bank Center, now called TC Energy Center, in 1983
- Neo Palladian style International Place at Fort Hill Square, Boston, MA in 1983
- French Mansard inspired 580 California of San Francisco, CA in 1984
- English Gothic inspired, all-glass PPG Place of Pittsburgh, PA in 1984
Ritchie described the entire process of designing and constructing the AT&T buildings, starting with the first meeting between the AT&T board and associates from Johnson/Burgee. Chairman John deButts told them, “Don’t you design me another glass box… when I’m flying into New York, I can point down… and say, look, there’s my building, that one that’s got the hole in the top.” deButts loved the postmodern design in the preliminary drawings, although architectural critics had mixed opinions. They questioned the choice of cladding the building in stone from a Connecticut quarry, putting an oculus or “Chippendale Top” decorative feature atop the building, and mixing so many eclectic styles.
A major design challenge was to prevent the building from encroaching on narrow Madison Avenue. The team designed a sitting and walking area inspired by the shopping center Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, Italy. Shops and restaurants invited visitors to browse and eat. Visitors entered a narrow, sixty-foot-tall lobby on the first floor, where they were greeted by a statue formerly called “The Spirit of Communication” but usually referred to as “Golden Boy”. He was 28 or 29 feet high, making him the second highest cast statue after the Statue of Liberty. He once stood on top of an earlier AT&T building and was removed by helicopter. Once greeted by the statue, visitors went via a circular glass elevator to the larger “sky lobby” on the second floor, where they could visit the former AT&T Museum or relax in a lounge with a handkerchief style ceiling. While visitors could not venture beyond this point, employees could take one of six elevators across the thirty-five additional stories in the building.
Today, the exterior of the building looks much the same as when it opened, although the interior is heavily modified. The galleria was renovated by Sony, the second owner of the building, which enclosed the ground floor to include a flagship store. This defeated the purpose of the open air gallery. In the latest round of renovations, its new owners pulled down a smaller building at the back of the skyscraper, built a lighter umbrella roof with glass, and planted small gardens. (While this was not mentioned in the talk, I had to know what happened to Golden Boy! He lives in the latest AT&T headquarters at Whitacre Tower in Dallas, TX.)
Alan Ritchie and Scott Johnson made the perfect tag team when showing beautiful pictures and describing the history of the AT&T Building and other skyscrapers. I especially enjoyed their description of working with Philip Johnson in the Seagram Building as young designers. I look forward to more talks hosted by the Skyscraper Museum.