New York architect Deborah Berke isn't much given to sentimental reveries, and yet at the mere mention of the name Treitel-Gratz she jettisons the lean, clean, no-nonsense rigor for which both she and her Manhattan-based practice are well known, and slips into the kind of
dreamy stream-of-consciousness state we tend to associate with, say, Marcel Proust at the
moment he took that first evocative bite out of the madeleine and started remembering things
past."I'm back in New York after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1977,"
recalls Berke,"and I'm making things-little things, not Important things-and I know about
Treitel-Gratz, because who didn't, and I'm thinking, 'All I want is that some day they make
something that I've designed'...not just because they're good, but because I know they're
perfect."
Treitel-Gratz,as those outside the inner circle of 20th Century architecture and design and
furniture and art may not be aware, is a venerable New York metal fabricating shop with, as
Berke suggests, an unimpeachable reputation."They are the last of a breed," offers Charles
Gwathmey, an architect whose many talents tend not to include wholesale fawning. 'They
have remained true to an ideal,and the ideal is quality. They do not compromise. They are
craftsmen-very dogmatic, very precise," Gwathmey knows because for more than four
decades he has turned to Treitel-Gratz to make everything from the furniture he designed for
the instantly iconic 1964 house and studio he built for his parents – painter Robert Gwathmey
and photographer-turned-textile-designer Rosalie Gwathmey - in Amagansett to a series of
elaborately engineered steel picture frames he designed for the 28,000-square-foot house at
the center of the 85-acre compound he and partner Robert Siegel built for computer kingpin
Michael Dell In Austin, Texas,
"Excellent," sums up the ever-succinct Richard Meier, another A-list architect who is more
accustomed to receiving praise than to doling praise out. Asked on what occasions he tums to
Treitel-Gratz, Meier says, "When I want something well done." Over the years, the Pritzker-
Prize-winning architect has looked to Treitel-Gratz to fabricate such things as one-off furniture,
fittings, and light fixtures for his own Upper East Side duplex, and, most recently, 27 stainless
Steel tables with translucent resin tops he designed for ”66,” the new Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant Meier polished off on Leonard Street in February.
Another kind of confirmation of Treitel-Gratz's eminence can be found in the catalog entry
for Lot #129 - "Stainless Steel Triple 'U' Andirons” - in Christie's, “Important 20th Certury
Decorative Arts" sale, held shortly before Christmas in New York. Obviously, provenance
played an important part in the $152,500 price that the lyrical 1948 andirons bought at the December 10th auction, and, sure enough duly listed alongside the name of the artist who
designed the andirons, Isamu Noguchi, and the name of the client who commissioned the
andirons, Mr. and Mrs, William A. M. Burden, is the name of the metal shop that fabricated the
andirons, Treitel-Gratz. What the Christie's catalog does not mention, however, is that Treitel-Gratz made the andirons in 1948 for the decidedly quaint sum of $169.75.
For this kind of anecdotal detail you have to go to Donald Gratz, the now 68-year-old
President of the company that his father, M.I.T.-educated engineer Frank Gratz, founded in 1929 wlth Harold Treitel, who, according to Gratz fils, was "a hell of a salesman."
"In the early days, it was mostly furniture-moderne with a [second] e - and industrial
models" says Gratz. "But we also did a lot of architectural work: railings, signs, custom furniture, and department store fixtures - not so much in New York, but we were big in Baltimore. It was a pretty broad line."
By the early 1930s, Treitel-Gratz had quickly moved up in the world, relocating from its
original cramped quarters in a brownstone on lower Lexington Avenue to half a floor of a six-
story light industrial building at 142 East 32nd Street. The company had also established itself
as the metal shop of choice for, among others, the celebrated industrial designer Donald
Deskey, who tapped Treitel-Gfatz in 1932 to work on the interiors of the first building erected
in the Rockefeller Center Complex: Radio City Music Hall. "We did a ton of stuff at Radio City,”
says Gratz, who admits to being especially pleased by the office of Radio City Music Hall
irnpresario S.L."Roxy" Rothafel. "'Roxy' had this unbelievably great office with all this fabulous
modern furniture that Deskey had designed, and my dad had made,”says Gratz, who was
recently summoned back to Radio City to repair some railings and took the opportunity to
look in on his father's perfectly preserved legacy.
Two years after Radio City Music Hall, Treitel-Gratz's work was on view at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. The company had fabricated the chromium-finish structural steel support for
the East Indian laurel veneer Steinway& Sons Grand piano that Gilbert Rohde, the Industrial
designer credited with putting Herman Miller on the modern furniture map in the 1930s, had
designed for The American Contemporary Industrial Art Thirteenth Exhibtion, which the
museum hosted in 1934. "We used to do a lot of special stuff for Steinway,” says Gratz. “One
of the pianos we worked on actually ended up in The White House... I think Truman was President at the time.
With Deskey and Rohde under its belt, Treitel-Gratz was off and running - snaring
commissions from such mid-century masters as Raymond Loewy, generally regarded as the
father of industrial design. "We did a lot of stuff for Loewy,” says Gratz. “My dad knew him
really well." Though the work Treltel-Gratz did with Loewy included projects for Coca-Cola,
General Electric, Frigidaire, and Carrier, perhaps the most delightful piece the company fabricated for the suave designer we have to thank for the Sears Coldspot refrigerator, the Shell logo, the interiors of Lever House, and, of course, the Studebaker Avanti, is a fanciful pink rolling dessert cart for Lord & Taylor that resembles nothing so much as a vintage bumper car at a State Fair.
“My dad also worked with Henry Dreyfus and Walter Teague,” notes Gratz. “Mostly doing
industrial models." And then there was Walter Ballard, the hotel lobby designer, who looked to
Treitel-Gratz to contribute its expertise for such grand New York dowagers as the Roosevelt
and Biltmore Hotels. "I know we also did some stuff in the Waldorf-Astoria," adds Gratz. "But right now I can't remember what it was."
When World War II arrived, Treitel-Gratz did its part for the war effort by making chairs
for the U.S. Navy. In fact. in many of the publicity stills from the 1954 WWII film The Caine
Mutiny, ”Humphrey Bogart, who played Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, is shown
sitting in a chair made by Treitel-Gratz.
After the War, Treitel-Grafz scored another professional coup, "We were the first company
in the United States to manufacture Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona furniture," says Gratz.
It happened in 1948, when Hans Knoll, a German emigre who had hung out a shingle for
the Hans G. Knoll Furniture Company in 1942, snared the American rights to the larger-than-life Bahaus architect's furniture designs for the German Pavilion at the 1929 International Industrial Exposition in Barcelona. Assisting in the cause, of course, was Florence Schust, who, before coming to work at Knoll in 1945 - and becoming Mrs. Hans Knoll in 1946 - had studied with Mies at the Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) in Chicago.
The relationship between Treitel-Gratz and Knoll Associates, as the company was renamed
after Knoll and Schust marriage, was a long and mutually beneficial one. "We did all of the metalwork on all of Knoll's furniture," says Gratz, noting that the exception was Harry Bertoia's wire chairs - which Knoll produced in its East Greenville, Pennsylvania factory. "Actually, Knoll was our biggest customer when I started working," adds Gratz, who joined his father and Treitel on East 32nd Street immediately after graduating from St. Lawrence University in 1955.
As Knoll's relationship with Mies developed, Treitel-Gratz kept up the production pace,
fabricating the additional furniture designs that Mies gradually released to his American
distributor. "We made the Barcelona chair and the Barcelona stool, plus we made the coffee table and the daybed, although the daybed was just four legs for me, since I didn't do the woodwork or the upholstery. We also made a few Tugendhat chairs, but they didn't really go anyplace. I remember, every Friday morning a guy would come from Knoll, and we'd have five Barcelona chairs, two Barcelona stools, and a table ready, and they'd all be unwrapped in the polishing department, and he'd inspect them. Then we'd pack them up, they'd take them to Pennsylvania and have them upholstered by another guy, and ship them out.”
The demand was steady, especially since the “Planning Unit” - as the interior design and
space planning arm of Knoll was called-was booming with commissions, thanks to Florence
Knoll, (who not only headed the Planning Unit, but began designing furniture to add to the
company's growing line. Many of the Florence Knoll pieces had chrome-plated elements,which were fabricated, no surprise, by Treitel-Gratz.
“We dealt with everyone in the Planning Unit,” says Gratz, noting that Treitel-Gratz had a
hand in such early Knoll projects as the Rockefeller family offices on the 56th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and the CBS offices at 485 Madison Avenue. “The year before I started working we did the CBS project, which included offices for both Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, and Bill Paley, the Chairman," adds Gratz. "But a few years before that, my father had done other work for CBS, independent of Knoll: He fabricated the CBS Radio Network's entire control-panel He did one like it for NBC.”
For those familiar with the emergence of modern corporate design In the 1950s and 1960s, the roster of projects Treitel-Gratz worked on will be familiar. First with the Planning Group – which went on to complete the jnteriors of architect Gordon Bunshaft's vast 1956-57 complex for the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company in Bloomfield, Connecticut – then with the interiors department of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, which picked up where the Planning Group left off when it disbanded in 1958.
"If you, swept floors at knoll you could get an executive job at Skidmore,” quips Gratz, who produced furniture and custom metal work for, among other SOM interiors projects, the Union Carbide building, the Reynolds Metals building, the Banker's Trust building, the Pepsi-Cola [Olivetti] building, and the Chase Manhattan Bank building. “I think Chase was the biggest single order ever for Barcelona chairs,” says Gratz. “It was something like 75 chairs. Actually,the Pepsi-Cola [Olivetti] building may also have been 75 Barcelona chairs. Ward Bennet was the interiors consultant on Pepsi-Cola, we worked for Ward for a longtime.”
Though Gratz had been manufacturing Mies furniture for years, the first time he actually met the great man was in 1957 when Mies dropped in at Treitel-Gratz's shop on 32nd Street to try out a prototype of the slightly springy cantilevered armchair he designed in 1929-30 for the Tugendhat House in Brno, Czechoslovakia. Gratz had received the commission to fabricate the chair – known not very imaginatively, as “The Brno Chair”--by Jens Risom, a Danish emigre who, after leaving Knoll in 1945, began designing and distributing furniture on his own, "Risom asked us to make a dozen Brno chairs for a client who was moving into the Seagram Building, I guessed he'd made some kind of a deal with Mies. Anyway, he told us that the chairs had to be fabricated out of a very special steel, so we went out and bought aircraft quality steel – which is much, much stiffer than ordinary steel – and we made up a chair. Mies came in and sat in it, and, of course the chair had no give. And if it didn't give under Mies, who was a big man, it wasn't going to give. Mies said, 'No,no,no! This is all wrong.' And he left.
So then we sent a guy from the shop up to Philip Johnson's Glass House in New Canaan
to drill a hole in the bottom of one of his Brno chairs, because Philip had brought his Brno chairs here in the 1930s.[In 1930, Johnson, then 24, commissioned Mies and his companion and largely unsung collaborator Lilly Reich to design an apartment for him in Manhattan, which was furnished with, among other Mies designs, Brno chairs that been manufactured in Berlin.] We sent the chips out for analysis, and discovered it was just ordinary steel. So we made another chair, and Mies came back, sat in it, and it was fine.” As for his impression of the great architect, Gratz says, “Nice guy, nasty black cigar...never saw him again.”
Gratz did, however, see a great deal of Mies's protege and associate architect on the Seagram Building, Philip Johnson, who received the commission to design the restaurant at the base of the bronze and-glass tower completed in 1958: The Four Seasons.
“For some reason, Philip likes me,” says Gratz, who first met Johnson in the early 1950s when Gratz's mother organized a house tour for her alma mater, Radcliffe College, in Westchester County-that included Joeseph Hirshhorn's House, Bernard Gimbel's house, and Johnson's Glass House - and invited her son to come along,
At the Four Seasons, Gratz worked not only with Johnson, but with restaurant designer Garth Huxtable. "We did the furniture, which was mostly by Mies, the banquettes, which were by Philip, and many of the serving carts and serving pieces, which were by Garth," says Gratz. "We also made six or eight big lily pads to sit in the pool for some fashion show, but I'm not certain who designed those." The Brno chairs Gratz fabricated for The Four Seasons were the first ever of stainless steel. They also represented the addition of the Brno chair to Knoll's collection of Mies furniture, which Treitel-Gratz manufactured -- in both the tubular and flat steel variations -- for, Gratz estimates, "the next five to eight years.”
Asked why the four Barcelona chairs at the 52nd Street entrance to The Four Seasons are bolted the travertine floor, Gratz says, after confessing that he persona|y drilled the holes that allowed the chairs to be fixed to the floor, “God forbid one of them should move a quarter of an inch."
A somewhat quirkier project that Gratz completed in 1958 was connected to the opening of architect Wallace Harrison's Time-Life building on Sixth Avenue. “Life magazine had put together a traveling exhibition of 'The 50 Greatest paintings of the World' according to I don't know who," says Gratz. "The paintings were shown in transparencies, and we made all the shadowboxes. Plus, they asked model us to make a quarter-scale model of the Sistine Chapel ceiling for the show -- again,which was shown in transparencies – which we did.” Though Gratz recalls that the critics were merciless in their ridicule of the exhibition, the photographer who shot the installation ended up working for Alexander Lieberman, the legendary editorial czar of Conde Nast Publications, who was also a sculptor.
One thing led to another,and Lieberman found his way to East 32nd Street, where he looked to Treitel-Gratz to fabricate his work for the next 30 years. “Alex was terrific,” says Gratz. “He really was," Lieberman was also quite dapper, according to Gratz. I've never seen anyone dress the way he dressed in the shop. You know those guys in the white lab coats at the Rolls Royce servicedepartment? Well, that's what Alex used to look like when he came here -- if impeccable. He used to come in on Saturdays, and we had a guy in the shop named Joe who he loved. Joe was Transylvanian, but he had apprenticed in Geneva so he spoke French, and he and Alex just hit it off. It was wonderful to watch them: They would work all day, starting half a dozen sculptures, then Alex would go off and we'd work for another six weeks getting everything done. "Among the pieces Gratz fabricated for Lieberman was the sculpture on the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair.