{"nrhp_refnum":"83004078","name":"Lever House","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"390 Park Ave.","address_restricted":false,"city":"New York","county":"Manhattan","state":"NY","lat":40.75946159200004,"lon":-73.97268562899995,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1983-10-02","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture"],"significance_levels":["national"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Lever House is a twenty-four-story glass and steel office building at 390 Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan, designed and built in 1950-52 as the New York headquarters of Lever Brothers Company.","why_significant":"The nomination argues it was one of the first corporate expressions of the International Style in postwar America and an outstanding work of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. It was also among the first buildings to use a zoning provision allowing an unbroken slab with no setbacks and an open ground-level courtyard, and it began Park Avenue's change from residential to corporate use.","narrative":"Lever House is a twenty-four-story tower at 390 Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan, built in 1950-52 for Lever Brothers Company. A 53-foot-wide glass and steel slab rises above a two-story base that appears to hover over an open, colonnaded ground floor and courtyard. Stainless-steel mullions hold green-tinted glass panels and blue-green spandrels, and only the western service core is solid masonry. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed it, with Gordon Bunshaft as partner in charge. The building matters as an early corporate example of the International Style in postwar America. It was also among the first to use a New York zoning provision permitting a tower without setbacks if it covered only a quarter of its lot, and its open courtyard became a common feature of office buildings. Its construction started the shift of Park Avenue north of Grand Central from apartment houses to glass office towers. Historians widely treat it as a milestone of American architecture.","period_of_significance":"1950-52","architect_builder":"Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Gordon Bunshaft, Partner in Charge","architectural_style":"International Style","criteria":[],"status_note":"Listed as occupied and in excellent condition; the form says it is free from alterations apart from replacement glass panels and some concrete sidewalk sections, and the second floor has been converted from a dining room to a computer center.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:50:41.628602-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/83004078.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/83004078/14f02961b5-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/83004078/14f02961b5-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","author":"Beyond My Ken","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lever_House_390_Park_Avenue.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Beyond My Ken</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lever_House_390_Park_Avenue.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75319690","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lever_House","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1821821"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/new-york/manhattan/lever-house-83004078/"}