Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM, founded 1936) is the dominant American modernist architecture firm of the postwar era — best known commercially for Lever House (1952), the Willis Tower (1973), the original World Trade Center master plan, and One World Trade Center (2014). The firm's Manhattan residential portfolio is more selective: Manhattan House (1950, designed with Mayer & Whittlesey in a collaboration that effectively defined the modernist white-brick apartment block as a residential type) and 392 Central Park West (within the Park West Village complex). SOM's residential program represents the modernist apartment ideal — open floor plates, expanded glazing, simplified service infrastructure — distinct from the pre-war classical vocabulary that dominates most of Manhattan's tier-one inventory. Manhattan House, designated a NYC landmark in 2007, remains the firm's most influential residential commission.
Buildings designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
