Architecture: A Porch for Pedestrians

In most recent U.S. urban building, the rule has been every man for himself. With no overall plan, the architect has too often stopped his concern at the property line. Occasionally, as a civic gesture, a building will draw back to leave space for a prestige plaza or a fountain or two. But the impression is still that of a battle of towers, much like Renaissance Bologna’s, where each noble family vied to build a taller battlement from which to frown and, on occasion, bombard one another.

A sparkling exception to the rule is Minneapolis’ Northwestern National Life Insurance Co. headquarters. Designed by Minoru Yamasaki (TIME cover, Jan. 18, 1963) and inaugurated last week, it not only makes peace with the city’s complex grid, but frames a vital view into the city’s 24-block Gateway Center redevelopment project.

Yamasaki began with an awkward lot, bisected by Nicollet Avenue, scheduled to become a pedestrian mall ending in a park. Instead of obstructing the vista, Yamasaki resolved to enhance it. But how? He considered lifting the structure on stilts (“It would have been like going through a tunnel”), putting in an archway (“But that would have cut the building up”), moving it off to one side (“Then the building would not have been visible from Nicollet Avenue, and we had a beautiful location”).

The solution, when it came, so delighted Yamasaki that he confesses to having jumped up and down with glee: a giant, six-story portico, which would marry the building, mall and park. To slenderize his trumpet-topped columns as much as possible, he manufactured them in one piece on the site and derricked them into place. The building repeats their rhythm around the facade in the manner of a Greek temple.

Yamasaki’s 25-ton columns soar 80 ft. The Parthenon’s portico rises only 34 ft., and the columns of Paris’ Madeleine church climb 65 ft. But Yamasaki winces at the comparison. He prefers to call his colonnade, in congenial fashion, a porch. “When you build something,” Yamasaki insists, “you ought to be a good neighbor.”