Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building (1958) is a 38-story icon of corporate International Modernism. It was designed as the headquarters for the distillers Joseph Seagram's & Sons, thanks to the foresight of Phyllis Lambert, the daughter of Samuel Bronfman, Seagram's CEO. Its perfectly-proportioned, utterly simple slab of dark bronze and amber-tinted glass curtain walls set a style as did the opulently naked granite plaza behind which it is set, which encouraged New York City's zoning board to rewrite its zoning regulations in 1961 to encourage similar open public spaces.
