A career question drawn from 500 Fifth Avenue

Oct 2, 2007

500 Fifth Avenue is a New York skyscraper built in the late 1920s. It's never gotten much attention, perhaps because it was never the tallest nor most fashionable building in Manhattan. But it's still in use (and, to my eyes, is more attractive than many of New York's modern skyscrapers). Nonetheless, a recent New York Times piece describes the faint praise the building and its architects received from the press:

In late 1930 The New York Times praised 500 Fifth as a "thoroughly frank expression of the requirements of an up-to-date office building." This might not have pleased an artistically inclined architect, but such organization was the watchword of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon.

In a 1941 interview, The Architectural Record said of Mr. Shreve that "order, forethought and system are words that might be his middle name." But Mr. Salmon's building received little real discussion as a work of architecture, opening as it did in the shadow of its 34th Street sibling [the Empire State Building].

Here's the question I took away from this piece. What do you want to build for: a very long shot at acclaim for something that looks artistic and in-the-moment? Or something with "forethought and system" that will last through decades of history and financial upheavals?

In other words: Do you want a chance at short-lived fame, or do you want to build something that, though it may be ignored now, will endure past your lifetime?

• IN: Resources
• #