ABSTRACT
In the 50s, a postwar generation of projects initiated a mission able to displace old ideas that benefited the private sector in relation to the public. As an example of this renovation, the street wall of the once considered most coherent avenue of the country, Park Avenue, suddenly is fragmented by Lever House and Seagram Building. These two projects, contrary to what people may imagine today, did not have a warm reception. Both works were able to introduce space for public use in a congested Midtown (when everybody else was maximizing the private space) and contributed to important rupture of the urban canyons and obsolete zoning regulations. However, Lever House and Seagram's public generosity did not go unnoticed by the critic and the public.
