788
PARTISAN REVIEW
The Parthenon, for example, is an outside building. It hasn't any
inside. On the other hand, some of the cathedrals of the Middle
Ages have no exterior.
BLDD:
Did you ever expect the public furor that erupted when the
design for the AT&T building was announced several years ago?
PJ:
No. I was given the job because I had worked on the Seagram
Building twenty years before. We promised AT&T, "We're going
to give you the most important building in the city of New York,
which is only your due as the biggest company in the world ." We
designed it, and they loved it. We started the building and, sud–
denly, all hell broke loose. Ada Louise Huxtable hated it.
If
Ada
Louise hated a building, you were in deep trouble.
BLDD:
It certainly became the most notorious unbuilt building in
America. What were you trying to do there, and do you think you
succeeded?
PJ:
I was trying to recall the great periods of New York architecture.
For instance, the colonnade is the same as the Municipal Building,
which was built by McKim, Mead & White in 1911. There was
nothing unusual or new about a colonnade of that kind. There's
nothing unusual about windows cut in a hole. The top is unusual
but that was an old classical theme .
BLDD:
You have also done something in that building that is either
revisionist or a very fresh idea: instead of overhead, fluorescent
lighting, you plan to rely on incandescent desk lamps. Why did
you decide to do that?
PJ:
To reduce the glare of fluorescent light ceilings, the bad color of
fluorescent tubes, the boredom of the office world.
BLDD:
What other innovations have you developed in response to
either financial or technological constraints?
PJ:
The best thing we did was that we got rid of the elevators. At the
end of that great room on the ground level are four "shuttle cars,"
as we call them. They go up to the lobby, which is up on top of
that great, big arch. That's why the great, big arch is such a great,
big arch. When you get up to the real lobby, you're still under the
arch itself. The lobby of the building is ten stories high .
BLDD:
What prompted you to design that monumental space on the
ground level?
PJ:
The public . We had a big building to construct on a tight site .
We wanted to give as much of the ground back to the public as we
could, so we took the elevators, that would have taken up the
whole ground floor on a small site like that, and just lifted them
up. We left the whole ground floor open. What people object to
