In 1964, Albert Ledner, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, completed his largest and most high-profile collaboration with the National Maritime Union (NMU)—the Joseph Curran Building in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Built as part of a public relations campaign by the NMU to lend a sense of prestige and legitimacy to a profession then suffering from a lack of both, the building was both the union’s national headquarters and its New York hiring hall. It was key to creating a modern image for the union, achieved in no small part by its distinctive nautical design.
Entering the cityscape around the same time as Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal, Wallace Harrison’s Lincoln Center, and Edward Durell Stone’s 2 Columbus Circle, the building was bold in its appropriately ship-like design, in its deference to circular forms (illustrating fairness and equality), and in its stark contrast with the more historic architecture that typifies Greenwich Village.
