Date
1951 - 1952
Project Type
Commercial
Location
Hempstead, NY USA
Languages
Dutch
English
French
German
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Spanish
People/Firms
A. N. Marquis Co.
Abraham and Straus, Inc.
Agostini, Alfredo
Albers, Josef
Albert, Edouard
Aldrich, Nelson
Allen, Deborah
American Architect and Architecture
American Designers Committee for French Civilian Relief
American Embassy (Bogotá, Colombia)
Amsterdamsche Bank
Andrews, Wayne
Andruss, D.
Aoyagi, Tetsu
Arango, Elizabeth
In September of 1950, Breuer was named "Consulting Architect for Exterior Design" for a new branch of the department store Abraham and Straus to be located in Hempstead, Long Island. Breuer created a flat-roofed, two-story building to which an additional two floors could be added if needed. Each façade was detailed in a different way, but most of the façades featured fieldstone walls, pierced by display windows, on the first floor. The upper level was faced with plain or textured brick, in which bricks were recessed from the plane of the façade. The main entrance was indicated by a recessed area, clad in terrazzo with two round columns rising the full height of the building and framing glass doors. Breuer shaded the glass display windows with a canopy and placed an American flag above each one. The store opened to the public on February 28, 1952 and closed forty-years later. By then, the contrasting materials and textures that defined Breuer's façade had been replaced.
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