Breuer’s Madison Museum Lobby May Get Interior Landmark

Marcel Breuer, to the left of then–First Lady Jackie Kennedy, smiled as the ribbon was cut at 945 Madison Avenue. The lobby where he stood is now being considered for landmark status.
Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images

There is no building in New York City like the Brutalist monolith designed by Marcel Breuer on Madison Avenue, formerly owned by the Whitney Museum. Its “perpetually startling” quality extends to the lobby with its medieval gangway leading over a see-and-be-seen restaurant into a hall floored in chunky, native bluestone and presided over by a grid of industrial lamps. But the survival of that striking hall was thrown into question two years ago when the Whitney announced it was selling to Sotheby’s. Last month, there were finally signs that the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission is leaning toward protecting these interiors — and the museum’s legendary main staircase — along with the 1966 building itself. “I didn’t know it wasn’t a landmark,” said commissioner Jeanne Lutfy, a real-estate agent. “I was like, Oh my God. Thank God we’re doing this.”

Historically, the decision to landmark any interior in New York is rare — only 123 spaces have been. The city’s modern-architecture buffs knew they had to proceed quickly, considering the commission had done nothing to prevent developers from demolishing the Streamline Moderne lobby of the McGraw Hill building and the postmodern marvel of 60 Wall Street’s atrium, where mourners even held a funeral. The wrecking ball seems to come especially quickly for Brutalist structures.

945 Madison was built for the Whitney but was leased to the Metropolitan Museum and the Frick before selling to Sotheby’s.
Photo: Christina Horsten/picture alliance/Getty Images

Docomomo, a nonprofit devoted to modern architecture, sprang into action after Sotheby’s announced its takeover. In 2023, it formally called on Landmarks to study whether the building should have an individual landmark status and whether some interiors should be protected, too. (Its exterior is already protected by its location in a historic district, so that change seems less monumental.) The community board voted in favor of landmarking the interior this November — just as Sotheby’s announced it would undertake a “sensitive adaptation” that my colleague Justin Davidson suggested might be less sensitive, since the auction house was hiring Herzog & de Meuron, a firm known for some degree of “showmanship.”

An interior landmark will cover the famous lobby and its coat check, the gangway entrance, and the front of the former restaurant below.
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

A date for the Landmarks Preservation Commission vote has not yet been set, but Docomomo is already celebrating what seems to many architects and historians like an obvious choice. The building has an international reputation as one of Breuer’s masterpieces and a place in the memories of many New Yorkers. During the hearing last month, members of the commission talked about the quirky sculpture on the stairwell (“Dwellings,” by Charles Simonds) and commissioner Mark Ginsberg shared the story of visiting the Breuer at ten years old, when his mother took him to see the work of Alexander Calder. “I’m very fond of the building,” he said.

Update 2:35 p.m.: This article originally stated that the community board voted in favor of protecting the interior and the building with landmark status. It has since been corrected to state that the board passed a resolution in favor of landmarking only the interior.