Rock Solid

Concrete is plastic, explained structural engineer in a talk about Eero Saarinen’s CBS Headquarters hosted by the Skyscraper Museum. Levy, who worked on the project as a young man, was referring to concrete’s conduciveness to shape-making. The skyscraper isn’t particularly willful—at least, not in the manner of that other local Saarinen icon, the TWA Terminal. The opposite of airborne, it appears steadfastly rooted to its patch of Midtown. Critics considered it abstemious. But up close, one can appreciate the careful modulations of the triangular piers that run up all four sides of the building.

The tower, which also goes by the name Black Rock, became the first concrete high-rise in New York when it was completed in 1965. Why reinforced concrete and not steel? The answer, in not so many words, was that Saarinen and Levy’s boss Paul Weidlinger wanted it. “Sometimes as engineers we try to do a good job, and sometimes, things go wrong,” remarked Levy, who is the co-author (with Mario Salvadori) of Why Buildings Fall Down. After the Surfside Condominium collapse, Levy’…