Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Lever House, one of the major landmarks of International Style architecture, was designed by Gordon Bunshaft, of the the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Sited along Park Avenue between 53rd and 54th Streets in New York City, the building was completed in 1952. Weiskoff & Pickworth were the structural engineers and Jaros Baum & Bolles were the mechanical engineers.

From the guide to the Lever House architectural drawings, 1950-1953, (Columbia University. Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Department of Drawings & Archives, )

Founded in 1936, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) is one of the world's largest and most influential architecture, urban design, engineering, and interior firms. SOM came to national prominence by the early 1940’s led in part by commissions from the United States government to build a number of military complexes, including the U.S. Naval Postgraduate College in Monterey, California, the Great Lakes Naval Station near Chicago, and the Atomic Energy Commission facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. After World War II, the firm has designed in a range of styles, including the International Style, brutalism, and postmodernism. While especially well known for its many iterations of the "glass box" skyscraper, SOM is also credited as the design pioneer of the suburban “corporate campus.” Originally based in Chicago with sister offices in New York and San Francisco, this international firm has built in over 50 countries, often designing for U.S.-based corporations expanding operations in developing countries.

SOM’s noted buildings include: Chicago's Sears Tower (Graham & Khan) and John Hancock Center (Khan), Lever House in New York City (Bunshaft), the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO (Netsch), the Bank of America World Headquarters in San Francisco, as well as Burj Dubai in Dubai and the Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai. Although SOM prefers to emphasize the firm rather than any one individual practitioner, some of its more prominent architects have included Charles Bassett, Natalie de Blois, Gordon Bunshaft, Myron Goldsmith, Bruce Graham, Bill Hartmann, Fazlur Khan and Walter Netsch.

From the guide to the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill photographs, circa 1945-1969., (Columbia University. Avery Architecture and Fine Arts Library. Department of Drawings and Archives.)