The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York presented Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, curated by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson. The show helped define the International Style for a broad public, emphasizing clean lines, modern materials, and minimal ornament. This provided a shared language that later shaped postwar corporate office towers in Manhattan.
488 Madison Avenue (the former Look Building) opened as an International Style office building designed by Emery Roth & Sons. Its clean, modern façade with horizontal window bands reflected how International Style ideas were spreading beyond a few landmark projects. It also signaled the growing role of commercial developers and repeatable design in postwar Midtown.
The United Nations Secretariat Building rose at the UN Headquarters site in Manhattan as a major early International Style office skyscraper in New York. Its glass curtain wall (a non-structural exterior skin) became a powerful model for later commercial towers. The project also showed how modernist towers could be paired with open space around the building.
Lever House opened as a major postwar International Style corporate headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), it paired a glass curtain-wall slab tower with a low base and a plaza-like open area. The building became a widely studied example of how modern offices could look and function in New York.
The Seagram Building opened on Park Avenue, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with Philip Johnson. Its precise proportions, bronze-and-glass façade, and public plaza made it one of the best-known International Style office towers in Manhattan. The building’s success helped make the plaza-and-tower approach desirable for developers and tenants.
The Union Carbide Building (270 Park Avenue) was completed as a large International Style corporate tower by SOM. It was one of the last major New York skyscrapers shaped by the older 1916 Zoning Resolution’s setback logic, even as it used a modern curtain-wall look and modern office planning. Its recessed tower and plaza space pointed toward a new approach to massing.
One Chase Manhattan Plaza (now 28 Liberty Street) opened in the Financial District, designed by SOM’s Gordon Bunshaft. The project used a powerful “tower in a plaza” composition, with the building taking up only part of its site and open space surrounding it. It helped shift downtown office development toward larger floor plates and more uniform tower forms.
New York City adopted the 1961 Zoning Resolution, changing how tall buildings were shaped and incentivizing privately owned public spaces. It introduced “incentive zoning,” allowing developers to gain extra floor area in exchange for creating plazas and other public amenities. This policy strongly supported the postwar International Style office tower formula in Manhattan.
277 Park Avenue opened as an International Style office skyscraper designed by Emery Roth & Sons. Its tall, repetitive façade and large, efficient floors reflect how International Style principles became standardized for corporate office space. Projects like this reinforced Park Avenue’s identity as a corridor of postwar modern office towers.
140 Broadway (Marine Midland/HSBC Bank Building) was completed as an International Style office tower designed by SOM’s Gordon Bunshaft. Its form responded to the 1961 zoning framework, including a slimmer tower with open space at ground level. The building illustrates how the zoning changes shaped a new generation of Manhattan office towers in the 1960s.
One New York Plaza opened near the southern tip of Manhattan as a large modern office skyscraper. Designed by Kahn & Jacobs with William Lescaze’s firm, it continued the postwar trend toward big, efficient towers for finance and corporate tenants downtown. Its completion showed how the office-tower model had expanded well beyond Midtown.
The World Trade Center was inaugurated as a large office complex centered on the Twin Towers, designed by Minoru Yamasaki with Emery Roth & Sons. Its immense scale and highly regular modern façade language marked a peak moment for International Style-influenced corporate development in Manhattan. The complex also signaled how far postwar office-tower planning had moved toward superblocks and large public authorities by the early 1970s.
By 1975, Manhattan’s boom in postwar International Style office towers had largely shifted into new architectural directions, including more expressive late modernism and emerging postmodern reactions. The International Style remained influential, but it was no longer the uncontested default for new office towers. This change set up debates about preservation and redevelopment of midcentury modern buildings in later decades.
Postwar International Style office towers in Manhattan (1929–1975)