Battery Park Apartment Buildings Project, New York, NY (Site plan sketch)
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
American, born Germany. 1886–1969
1957
A quick pencil-on-paper site-plan sketch by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for a 1957 Battery Park apartment proposal, aiming to capture the basic massing and window placements of two proposed apartment blocks.
You immediately notice the economy of the marks—two roughly rectangular building outlines with tentative vertical window slits—inscribed on a piece of printed restaurant stationery whose blue stamp and the phrase “Meet Me on the Terrace” ground the study in a specific, everyday moment.
This modest working drawing reveals Mies’s reliance on spare, iterative sketches to explore proportion and siting, showing how minimalist, abstract studies informed the development of postwar high‑rise modernism.
Medium
Pencil on paper
Dimensions
4 x 5 1/2" (10.2 x 14 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Mies van der Rohe Archive, gift of the architect
Accession
MR5700.4
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
