Ninety-year-old engineer revisits New York skyscraper
by HEIDI BAMFORD Regional archivist

Emil Inderbitzen looks over illustrations of the Union Carbide and Carbon Corp. building in New York City. He developed a coating for the metal exterior that has endured to this day. Photo by Amy Krakowiak Purchase color photos at www. BeeNews. com

Exactly 50 years ago, the executive officers at the Union Carbide Company began planning for their new corporate headquarters in New York City.

The company, previously known as Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation, which had been founded in 1917, wanted a new structure to go with their new name. This was the heyday of Union Carbide, and its officers wanted a structure that would reflect the company's innovation and dominance in the chemical industry since World War II.

It is somewhat of an irony when one discovers that the two people most responsible for the look of this breakthrough building situated in New York City would have both come from humble backgrounds in Buffalo, though one is now a longtime resident of Amherst.

To carry off the project, an architectural designer from the firm of Skidmore, Owens and Merrill was hired for the project in 1957. This designer, just as top designers before him, wanted to construct a building with materials and in a style that would reflect the technological advances of the day. His choice was a simple, steel frame, but a frame that would literally mirror the strength and elegance of its corporate namesake.

The building, which stands at 270 Park Ave. (between 47th and 48th streets at Madison Avenue), when completed in 1961 was considered one of the city's greatest modern buildings, "the ultimate pinstripe building," of corporate architecture that was to dominate the Manhattan skyline, not by its sheer size, but its sleek, black facade.

The designer from SOM, Gordon Bunshaft, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, was born in Buffalo in 1909. He grew up on Manchester Place, off Richmond Avenue, on Buffalo's West Side, attending Public School 45 and Lafayette High School.

His father worked preparing eggs for local bakeries. Bunshaft left Buffalo after high school to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and upon graduation, he joined the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owens and Merrill where, during his 42-year career there, became one of their top designers, receiving numerous awards, including the Pritzker Prize for Architecture.

Bunshaft, a primary influence on contemporary American architecture, spent much of his life in New York City, where he was able to see on a daily basis many of the buildings he designed there. Bunshaft's buildings are located around the world, including the 1960 addition of the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.

Emil Inderbitzen was born on Box Street on the East Side of Buffalo in 1917. He grew up on Fillmore Avenue and attended St. Mark's Elementary and Bennett High School. Inderbitzen's parents, of Swiss and Polish heritage, both worked at the Lafayette Hotel.

Inderbitzen graduated from Canisius College in 1940 and after graduation began work at Union Carbide. Inderbitzen spent the next 30 years at the Union Carbide facility in Niagara Falls, N. Y.

Inderbitzen, known to his family and friends as "Inde," married Ruth Ziemer and raised six children in their home for more than 50 years on Windermere Boulevard in Amherst. Inderbitzen now knows something he didn't then - he was part of a group working on uranium analysis for the Manhattan Project in the 1940s.

He tried to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps and then the Navy after Pearl Harbor. He was turned down both times and told to return to his work at Union Carbide.

The Union Carbide building, now owned by and known as J.P. Morgan Chase Bank building, represents the apex of modernism in American architecture from both an aesthetic and a scientific standpoint. Bunshaft was a leader in the Modernism movement, also often referred to as the "International style" after the 1932 Museum of Modern Art's exhibition of contemporary European architecture.

Bunshaft was a master at designing these "functional" structures, avoiding fashion and decoration, instead giving each structure a simple "signature" form and structure to identify with the corporate organizations that commissioned these buildings.

On the scientific side, new advances made it possible to work with stainless steel and aluminum, giving these metals color and corrosive and abrasive resistance, which led to their increasing use not only in decoration but also in actual construction in building exteriors.

Inderbitzen recalls that he developed his coating process as an alternative to the processes used by Oscar Bach, a world-famous metallurgist and designer (1885-1957) whose works can also be found on the exteriors and interiors of many buildings in New York City (the Empire State building, the RCA building and metal sculptures in the Rockefeller Center area) and other cities.

At the time, it was believed that Bach's process would not withstand the outdoor elements of New York City, and the Union Carbide officers felt that a process uniquely developed by their company would be good for business and image. Inderbitzen eventually came up with a "permyron" process to compete with the anodized coating processes then being employed. A unique step in his process was that of having patterns stamped into the steel panels that had already been treated with the black coating - rather than carrying out the stamping prior to coating the metal.

The stamped pattern was applied at Rigidized Steel, located on Ohio Street in Buffalo, a local company still owned and operated by the third-generation Smith family.

The Chase building was the first significant public demonstration of the new finish and is described in informational literature of the time from both Union Carbide and Rigidized Steel. Much of Bunshaft's life and work is well-documented in several repositories around the world, most notably the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library at Columbia University.

In contrast, there is virtually no documentation, other than family records, preserving the work and life of the engineer who gave the Union Carbide Company its signature building's color in 1961.

The careers and lives of these two men from the Buffalo area are linked by the single structure in New York City - though they never met and followed very different paths in their lives, their talents were brought together for this one modern masterpiece of national and international significance.

Today, 50 years later, the architect Bunshaft is dead, having passed away at his home in New York City in 1989. He is buried in the Pine Ridge Cemetery in Cheektowaga, alongside his wife, Nina, and his parents.

Inderbitzen, the chemical engineer, continues to live in Amherst. He turned 90 this past summer, celebrating with more than 50 children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

As a surprise, Inderbitzen's family took him to New York City late last month to revisit the building he has not seen since it was completed in 1961.

Lane Mariotti of the public relations office and Kenneth Croker of the corporate security office at the J.P. Morgan Chase Co. accommodated Inderbitzen and his family members with an extensive private tour of the building, including a stop at the office of the company's chief executive officer, where Inderbitzen was amazed to observe that the executive desk was as large as his kitchen.

Croker was treated to a familiar story Inderbitzen enjoys telling his family, about the time he was taken as a guest to New York City by the Union Carbide executives for the unveiling of the building. Not sure to this day whether or not they were joking, Inderbitzen recalls one officer telling him that if the black finish on the building's exterior did not last, he would be brought back to New York City with a paintbrush.

Inderbitzen's family presented him with a paintbrush at his 90th birthday party, and he brought it along on the trip, just in case.

Heidi Bamford is regional archivist of the Documentary Heritage Program and regional coordinator of the New York State Archives celebration.