A flavor of the ’50s in a high-tech design

The bright, wavy, blue-and-green logo of the Wachovia Corporation is ubiquitous in Manhattan these days because of the company’s growing network of bank branches. Now the company, which is based in Charlotte, N.C., is in the final stages of consolidating the New York outpost of its corporate and investment banking services division in the Seagram Building at 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd Streets.

The company’s nine floors there, to be completed next year, have been designed by Bill Bouchey, design principal of Mancini Duffy Architecture Design in New York.

The Seagram Building, a 38-story, 1958 structure designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is a designated landmark — as are parts of the interior, designed by Philip Johnson. Mr. Bouchey said that the challenge for the design team was to combine a futuristic feel of 21st-century high-tech banking with Mr. Johnson’s mid-20th-century-modern look. 

For Stephen Cummings, Wachovia’s senior executive vice president for corporate and investment banking services, the building’s prestige and its Midtown location near some of the bank’s chief competitors enhanced the image it was seeking to create in the industry. “We wanted to make a strong statement about our commitment to grow this business,” Mr. Cummings said, “and that we are going to be a player who is side by side and toe to toe with the leaders in this business.”

Wachovia employees have been moving into the building in phases since December 2005. As of February, they occupied the second through the seventh floors; they will be moving into the ninth floor by September and the 10th floor next year. (The eighth floor is occupied by other tenants and was not available.)

The total space, formerly occupied by Vivendi, measures 176,500 square feet. There is an additional 7,500 square feet underground at the concourse level that includes the mail room and the copy center; it is roughly 80 percent occupied.

Some 660 Wachovia employees are now in the building; most came from 12 East 49th Street, one of the company’s six other Manhattan offices — space that the company is keeping. Other workers moved from Wachovia offices in Baltimore. By next year, 1,200 Wachovia employees will be in the building, out of a total of 1,900 in New York City, including those at the 20 retail bank branches in Manhattan and one in the Bronx.

The footprint of the building is shaped like a dumbbell, a design that works well for a financial services group that is subject to stringent compliance regulations governing separation of different groups within the corporate and investment bank.

A crucial part of the design includes the company’s three trading floors — on the second, third and fourth floors — each with room for more than 200 traders.

Each trading floor runs the length of the building, from 52nd to 53rd Street. All are linked by an open, three-story interior staircase in marble, glass and brushed stainless steel. The stairs sit in front of a wall of Wachovia waves carved in white plaster that are lit in a subtle play of company greens and blues that fade continually from one to the next over the course of the day.

In some ways, the staircase design harks back to the 1950s, representing the blend of old and new that Mr. Bouchey and Wachovia were seeking. The task, Mr. Bouchey said, was to go modern while respecting the original Johnson interior and the Mies bronze and bronzed glass exterior. Mr. Bouchey said he had to work with certain restrictions, like leaving the original landmarked terrazzo and limestone elevator bank, which Mancini Duffy restored, and not disturbing the continuous 15-foot-wide perimeter of the original Mies ceiling design, with its illuminated acrylic panels held in place by brushed aluminum frames.

The panels of the ceiling design closest to the windows had to remain to maintain a uniform appearance from the outside, he said. The original heating and cooling induction units in front of the windows also had to stay, to avoid seeing different shapes of furniture, and messy consoles, from the street. Even the adjustment of the Venetian blinds is limited to three positions.

Mr. Bouchey said he based the renovation on a plan of straight walls, floating planes and strict rectangles, leaving curves — except for Wachovia’s logo, which is part of the décor — out of the equation.

“It’s a Miesian building whose cues are rectangles that are derived from the curtain wall on the outside,” said Mr. Bouchey, whose firm has designed interiors for the Condé Nast headquarters in Times Square and for Bloomingdale’s, as well as the corporate conference center at the Time Warner Center. “We deliberately didn’t introduce curves and angles.”

The interior is straight lines and clean forms, from the ceiling down to the linear pattern on the brown-beige-taupe carpeting; variations of the colors are used throughout the space. The original backlit acrylic ceiling panels blend with multilevel cove ceiling configurations whose square and recessed fixtures are in keeping with the design theme.

Glass blades or partitions between the ceiling and the top of the wood veneer workstations also leave the landmarked ceiling line uninterrupted, while glass panels that extend office walls around the periphery blur the partitions for a roomier feel. “The glass blade pushes the drywall back and gives the appearance that the wall is floating,” Mr. Bouchey said.

There are as many “floating” details as possible, including frameless glass doors and meeting-room partitions, some of which have the Wachovia logo applied via a high-tech film.

Throughout, workstations are of different heights, varying according to department. Most are finished in wood, although overhead bins are sometimes in white metallic lacquer to be true to the notions of transparent, translucent and floating. In the same vein, administrative counters at the entrances to various departments are in laminated white glass, while traditional wall-mounted whiteboards for writing are back-painted glass.

The furniture chosen by Mr. Bouchey is reminiscent of the time of the building’s construction. Reception areas are in the same brown and beige palette but have different textural schemes. They range from cool white marble floors that contrast sharply with plush textured velveteen banquettes, to eucalyptus wood wall panels and leather-covered reception desks in shades of espresso brown, to others carpeted in plaid and furnished with taupe Barcelona chairs designed by Mies. In the public areas, low tables have glass tops.

Furniture in the “morning call” room, the scene of three-times-a-day meetings about the stock market, has a boxy, 1950s feel and is covered in taffy-colored leather. The room seats 100.

The wavy Wachovia logo maintains a subtle presence on every floor because of how it contrasts with the unbending angles of the interior design. Less subtle are the bursts of signature blue and green on walls, or emanating from L.E.D. panels in the ceiling of the elevator lobby and in some reception areas, that remind visitors of exactly whose offices these are.

“We wanted it to be clean, fresh, light and open,” Mr. Cummings said.


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