Mayer & Whittlesey (Albert Mayer and Julian Whittlesey, partnership active 1935–1950s) is best known for two transformative Manhattan apartment commissions: Manhattan House (1950, designed with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill — designated a NYC landmark in 2007), which established the white-brick modernist apartment block as the dominant postwar Manhattan residential type, and 240 Central Park South (1940), which introduced the curved-window setback massing that would influence many subsequent CPW commissions. Albert Mayer in particular was central to the post-WWII academic conversation about urban density and modernist housing typology. The firm's two surviving major Manhattan commissions remain among the most influential examples of the postwar modernist apartment program in the city.
Biography
