![]() People get hired or fired romances begin or end influential deals are cut and friends become enemies or vice-versa. Close to noon early arrivals would wander toward tables or stop at the bar for a drink gradually the traffic increased to a quick pace between 12:30 and 12:45 and by 1:45 it began to thin out I thought about the poetic line, “the airy footsteps of the things that almost happen,” and this to me was “the airy footsteps of the things about to happen.” Restaurants are settings for many personal dramas especially when the there is a high-powered clientele. I would stand a few steps up the south stairway leading to the mezzanine and imagine the drama that was about to begin. In the early days after the restaurant opened, my favorite moments came around 11:40 in the morning. Set off by an oak floor and more walnut, the bar itself might be considered sculpture and, as always, the action around it was cause for imagination. It seemed more intimate, clubby, even perhaps a bit more serious or intellectual and the supple French walnut wall paneling had a warmer glow as it picked up the light from the soaring 20-foot windows. ![]() To most people, in the beginning, the Pool Room seemed the most glamorous and dramatic and so the place to be. As many conversations as I heard about this, I never found out what it took to finally snag 99 East 52nd. Post Office officials thought differently. They felt strongly that it should be a number below one hundred so it would not sound “too far east,” but the U.S. One controversy about the restaurant’s position in the building, was about its address. Feeling somewhat competitive with Black Rock, Johnson told me Saarinen had made a mistake by having visitors step down to a plaza to enter the building, whereas at Seagram, one had to step up – thus approaching with reverence, he explained. To be sure, this stately shaft with its mellow burnished bronze facade and the supple light reflected from its chain-windows is indeed a modern classic, and along with glassy-green Lever House and the monumental Eero Saarinen designed CBS building – aka Black Rock – represent a high point in modern architectural design in New York. Sam held the purse strings and there were none,” Philip Johnson told me. And thus was bronze chosen, never mind its costliness. Bronfman and Mies were walking along Park Avenue and Bronfman saw something made of bronze which he liked very much and asked if that would work. Johnson, he explained how the decision on the building’s exterior material was made. Well-versed in the art of architecture, the indomitable Phyllis Lambert astutely settled on Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with Philip Johnson as liaison and overseer of both the exterior and interior, both champions of what was known as the International Style. He then offered her the project as her own if she would return to New York. When she learned of the architect he had chosen, Phyllis Lambert objected to a choice she considered banal and wrote to her father suggesting that he use his money to create something really new, elegant and important – a modern classic. Seagram & Sons, based in Canada, decided to build a stunning corporate headquarters in Manhattan at a time when his daughter, Phyllis Bronfman Lambert, the apple of his eye, was living in Paris. It all began with the building, informally if never officially known as the Seagram Building.
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