A brand new sight in Manhattan these days, which make cab drivers slow up and pedestrians reduce speed to a trot, is the $6 million office building just completed (April 29, 1952 - my annotation) on Park Avenue at 53rd Street for Lever Brothers Company, makers of soap, food, toiletries and cosmetics. A sparkling tower of glass with its steel skeleton plainly revealed, Lever House, designed by Skidmore Ownings and Merrill, is raised on slim steel columns and seems to float in the air while mirroring the more conventional buildings around it.
The ground floor of the structure consists almost entirely of a garden and covered walks for promenaders. The next floor covers the whole site but has a rectangular hollow in the center that overlooks the park. Employes, 80% of whom are female, sit by the outer windows and try not to notice the whistling, waving pedestrians below them. Topping this second floor are gardens, behind which a tower rises for 22 stories. The building is covered with a thin glass skin which does not obscure the structure's steel columns. For its size it is the glassiest office building in the world. The tower is set back so that, unlike many in New York, it can been seen in entirety from the street. The building is sealed and air-conditioned and, with few exceptions, has no windows that open. this keeps dirt out, makes the office exceptionally clean. To keep the exterior immaculate a machine is lowered from the roof and the stainless steel and glass walls are scoured from top to bottom twice a month with Lever Brothers' detergent.
Window washing the outside of Lever building was complicated by fact that windows do not open. Solution was gondola suspended from car which runs on tracks around roof. Washers move gondola up and down by push buttons.
Two scrubbers are kept busy washing Lever House, whose glass area is the equivalent of about 5.000 windows. Twice a month it takes six days and about 22 pounds of detergent (Surf) to clean the entire outside of the building.
Main lobby looks out on gardens, has huge plant box that seems to run through glass wall and continue in garden. Raymond Lowery designed interiors.
Offices give everyone on floor a sweeping view, which the employes say is restful. All desks are adjustable to the proper height for each individual.
Executives' floor is the top office floor of the tower. Their offices open off either side of the anteroom. Lever Brothers occupies the entire building.
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