THE PAN AM BUILDING AND THE SHATTERING OF THE MODERNIST DREAM

When completed in Manhattan in 1963, the Pan Am Building towered over the barely preserved Grand Central Station and was the opening salvo in the glass-box corporate architectural revolution along lower Park Avenue. In this engaging study, Clausen, a University of Washington architectural historian, chronicles the development of the building from its 1958 announcement to its completion, centering her narrative on the roles of lead architects Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi and the death of the modernist ideal of socially functional architecture (in favor of buildings that maximized the cubic footage of a site). The clean but hulking Pan Am spurred the preservationist movement, along with the writings of critics Jane Jacobs and Ada Louise Huxtable. Clausen devotes a chapter to "Aftermath" and draws on the architectural community for her conclusions; as recently as 1988, architect Robert A. M. Stern called the Pam Am (now the Met Life) "an important lesson of what not to do, a landmark of the mistakes we made." (Dec.)