Art: The Seven Wonders

From the lowly wigwam to the Manhattan ziggurat, what are the “Seven Wonders of American Architecture?” This week 500 leading U.S. architects, polled for nominations, made a provocative set of choices. Tied in first place:

¶ Architect Eero Saarinen’s General Motors Technical Center (TIME, July 2, 1956), 25 buildings on 330 acres of suburban land outside Detroit—a precision-machined campus of laboratories, offices and shops.

¶ Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, designed in 1930 by a task force of architects (Reinhard & Hofmeister; Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray; Hood & Fouil-houx) and still expanding, with its 16th building, Harrison & Abramovitz’ 47-story TIME & LIFE Building, now going up.

The others in the top seven: ¶ Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Lever House (TIME, April 28, 1952) on Manhattan’s Park Avenue, designed by S.O.M. Partner Gordon Bunshaft—a pattern-setter for the era of the glass tower plus plaza.

¶ Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House (1909), nicknamed “the Battleship,” an earth-hugging, brick masonry private house with free-running cantilevers, on Chicago’s Woodlawn Avenue. Saved earlier this year from destruction, it will be handed over to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

¶ Frank Lloyd Wright’s S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc. (wax) headquarters in Racine, Wis. (1936-50), whose mushroom columns and cantilevered floors are admired as Wright’s simplest statement of his basic principles.

¶ Adler & Sullivan’s Carson Pirie Scott department store (1899-1904), at State and Madison Streets in Chicago—Louis Sullivan’s dramatic step forward in the development of the skyscraper.

¶ Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Falling Water,” at Bear Run, Pa. (1936), a reinforced concrete and natural stone summer house perched over a waterfall.

Among the runners-up, Dean of U.S. Architecture Frank Lloyd Wright picked up enough votes to place a fourth building, Manhattan’s still unfinished Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in 18th place. Adler & Sullivan added St. Louis’ 1890 Wainwright Building (eighth) and Chicago’s 1889 Auditorium (13th). Ludwig Mies van der Rohe won tenth place with Manhattan’s House of Seagram (TIME, March 3) and 24th with his Lake Shore Drive apartments in Chicago. Famed 19th century Architect Henry Hobson Richardson also rated two buildings: Boston’s 1877 Trinity Church (14th) and Chicago’s since-destroyed Marshall Field store (17th). The University of Virginia (eleventh) and Monticello (twelfth) scored for the 18th century’s Architect Thomas Jefferson.