Phyllis Lambert

I read a lot of titles that are specifically about a single building, and maybe I should do less of that. I'm an avowed architecture nerd, but a book-length look at just one building can provide too many trees and not enough forest views. Despite offering a lively history and many impressive photos and plan documents, here's why that happened in this case.

Lambert is a member of the Bronfman family that ran Seagram the corporation for many decades, and as such was heavily involved in planning and design of what became the Seagram Building. That closeness was an advantage when we learned much of the inside baseball that commissioned the legendary Mies as architect and delivered an improbably handsome and timeless building to Park Avenue. Ultimately, though, Lambert's insider status focused the narrative in the wrong places; I desperately wanted to know what it was like to be an everyday inhabitant of Seagram, or even one of the neighboring buildings. We got hints of it, and definitely coverage of the famed restaurant and the public plaza, but I was still left wanting on the office life of what is in the end an office building.… (more)