The Lever House was designed by Gordon Bunshaft for the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and completed in 1952. It was built as the international headquarters for Lever Brothers Company, a manufacturer of commercial soaps and detergents.
Lever House is situated on the west side of Park Avenue between East 53rd and East 54th Streets and is a 24 story glass and stainless steel clad office building composed of a vertical slab rising, and seeming to float, above a horizontal base. It was the first New York real estate venture to take advantage of a zoning provision that permitted a building to rise with no setbacks provided that the building covered only 25 percent of the lot.
Lever House introduced many innovations into skyscraper designs, most notably was the use of glass covering almost the entire façade. It also pioneered the concept of opening a portion of the ground floor to public use and of providing an open courtyard at its base. It was the first skyscraper of its kind on Park Avenue, and the second curtain wall structure in New York City, after the Secretariat Building at the United Nations Headquarters.
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Lever House as an official landmark in 1982, observing a requirement that a building must have existed for 30 years. The landmark designation of November 9, 1982 stated: "Lever House has a special character, special historical and aesthetic interest and value as part of the development, heritage, and cultural characteristic of New York City. It is among the first, as well as the most famous, corporate expressions of the modern International Style in postwar America, is widely recognized as a key monument in the evolution of the International Style and has assumed an important role in the literature of modern architecture, and that Lever House remains outstanding for its spatial clarity, scale, and beauty of form."