highrise
A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdictio ...
apartment building
An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are ma ...
s in
Newark, New Jersey
Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.Seventh Avenue and Lower Broadway.
The 22-story towers were designed in the International Style by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and opened in 1960, originally known as Colonnade Park. The towers are built in the modernist style of " towers in the park," which advocated dense high-rise housing complexes set within parks and open spaces (which has since fallen out of fashion in favor of mixed-use and low-rise development). Soon after completing Manhattan's
Seagram Building
The Seagram Building is a skyscraper at 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd Streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with minor assistance from Philip Johnson, Ely Jacques Kahn, ...
, Mies designed the three towers near
Branch Brook Park
Branch Brook Park is a county park of Essex County, New Jersey. It is located in the North Ward of Newark, between the neighborhoods of Forest Hill and Roseville. A portion of the park is also located within the Township of Belleville. At , ...
, north of
Downtown Newark
Downtown Newark is the Central Business District of Newark in Essex County, New Jersey, United States.
Downtown is the site of the original Puritan settlement of Newark located at a bend in the Passaic River. The first settlers, led by Robert ...
and adjacent University Heights and Interstate 280.
Privately owned, the buildings were intended to bring middle-income families to the area of the Christopher Columbus Homes — a cluster of low-income apartment buildings, or public housing projects, which were eventually demolished. The Pavilion Apartments were sold in April 2018.
Historical significance
The Pavilion and Colonnade Apartments possess exceptional importance in the 20th century social history of Newark, urban planning and development, and Modernist architecture. The district has the distinction of being New Jersey's first urban renewal project and one of the first in the nation. Through an effort of over 10 years, involving planning, court cases, State and Federal legislation, and a number of developers, the Colonnade Park came to fruition in 1960. The immediate surrounding area has New Jersey's highest concentration of historic landmarks, including Plume House (c.1725), State Street Public School (c.1845), House of Prayer (c.1850),
Branch Brook Park
Branch Brook Park is a county park of Essex County, New Jersey. It is located in the North Ward of Newark, between the neighborhoods of Forest Hill and Roseville. A portion of the park is also located within the Township of Belleville. At , ...
Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd ...
, collaborated with the legendary developer
Herbert Greenwald Herbert Greenwald (August 16, 1915 – February 3, 1959) was a Chicago real estate developer who utilized Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as the design architect for several landmark modern residential buildings.
Personal life
Herbert "Squiff" Greenwald ...
to these towers in Newark among other projects, such as the 860–880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago, the Seagram Building in New York City, and Lafayette Park, Detroit. Upon Greenwald's death in a 1959 air crash, Colonnade Park became their last collaboration and Mies’ only residential project in the eastern United States.
File:Pavilion Apartments in 1962.jpg, The Pavilion in 1962
File:Colonnade Apartments in 1962.jpg, The Colonnade in 1962
File:Newark Colonnade Floorplan.jpg, Newark Colonnade - plan of typical floor
Buildings description
The Colonnade Park consists of three International Style residential towers designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and completed in 1960. They are located immediately adjacent to the northern edge of Newark's Central Business District, north of Interstate 280, east of Clifton Avenue, south of Seventh Avenue, and west of the intersection of Broad Street and Broadway. Conceived as “a city within a city,” the twin buildings known as the Pavilion Apartments are next to the city's Broad Street thoroughfare, and the large “double-length” building known as the Colonnade Apartments faces the majestic Branch Brook Park. The three 22-story aluminum-clad glass high-rises offer 1,240 apartments on a 23.5-acre site. The immediate surrounding area has New Jersey's highest concentration of historic landmarks. It is the only residential work ever constructed in the eastern states that was personally designed by Mies van der Rohe. As such, Mies' Newark project is in many ways aesthetically similar to the Seagram Building, with similar window proportions, exposed beams, columned ground floor, and elevator lobby.
Mies’ Colonnade Apartments, with its reflective glass skin, majestically stands above the treetops of
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822August 28, 1903) was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is considered to be the father of landscape architecture in the USA. Olmsted was famous for co ...
's Branch Brook Park in the west. Downhill toward the east, 1,500 feet away, the two Pavilion Apartments are perpendicularly oriented, but face each other with 500 feet apart. The narrower sides of the two rectangular structures are positioned next to Broad Street, Newark's historic artery since 1666. Looking back toward the west, the massive Colonnade Apartments commands a dramatic scene on the top of the elevation, with two Pavilion Apartments symmetrically spaced on its two sides. Now, without the eight Columbus Homes high rises in-between, Mies’ vision has become ever more pronounced in these three 22-story rental buildings. Upper-level floors command views of Downtown Newark and the Manhattan skyline.
A rectilinear prism, the Colonnade Apartments measures 446 feet by 66 feet and contains 560 apartments. (It is Mies’ most expansive structure.) Each bay of the building, that is the distance between two structural columns, measures 22 feet and contains four windows. Each of the two Pavilion Apartments towers is 214 feet by 66 feet with 340 apartments each (680 total). Each tower is a compact mass, symmetrical unto itself, framed by four corners that have a particular aesthetic earlier revealed at Mies' work for the
Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has prog ...
. The corners consist of two wide flanges at the center-lines and an eight-inch angle welded between - a feature shared with most of Mies' other towers. These towers were built with reinforced concrete columns to reduce costs, while a skin of glass and prefabricated aluminum moderated the buildings' internal temperature.
Gallery
File:Panorama of Pavilion and Colonnade Apartments in Newark, NJ.jpg, From left to right: Garden Spires Apartments (not related to Mies), Colonnade Apartments,
Branch Brook Park
Branch Brook Park is a county park of Essex County, New Jersey. It is located in the North Ward of Newark, between the neighborhoods of Forest Hill and Roseville. A portion of the park is also located within the Township of Belleville. At , ...
House of Prayer Episcopal Church and Rectory
House of Prayer Episcopal Church and Rectory is a historic site at Broad and State Streets in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, United States. The house was built in prior to 1725 (c. 1710) and the church in 1849 and they were added to the Nat ...
File:PavilionApts(South).jpg, The Pavilion at Sunset
File:PavilionAptsNewark.JPG, Pavilion from Downtown
File:PavilionApts(Newark) 02.jpg, The Pavilion
File:PavilionApts(Newark) 01.JPG, The Pavilion
File:PavilionApts(North).jpg, The Pavilion at Sunset
Colonnade
File:Colonnade(highrise)Newark4.jpg, Colonnade from
Branch Brook Park
Branch Brook Park is a county park of Essex County, New Jersey. It is located in the North Ward of Newark, between the neighborhoods of Forest Hill and Roseville. A portion of the park is also located within the Township of Belleville. At , ...
Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ( ; ; born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886August 17, 1969) was a German-American architect. He was commonly referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd ...
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National Register of Historic Places listings in Essex County, New Jersey
List of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Essex County, New Jersey
__NOTOC__
This is intended to be a complete list of properties and districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Essex County, New Jersey. ...
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List of tallest buildings in Newark
Newark, the largest city in New Jersey and second largest in New York metropolitan area, is one of the United States' major air, shipping, and rail hubs. It has a distinctive skyline, though shorter than that of much larger New York City and s ...