In 2008 the Seagram Building was turning 50 so I interviewed the daughter of the building's owner  — Phyllis Lambert, who had a big influence on its design — and turned it into a Talk of the Town piece for the New Yorker. They didn't take it but I continued to delve and researched the origins of the building that is a landmark in modernism created by Mies van der Rohe. To look at it now you might not pick up on the nuanced details, which have since been co-opted (often badly) by the world that grew up around it. I remember once my brother denigrating the Beatles by quoting a guitar-playing friend of his that said he could play their songs with one finger. That guy missed the point. As do the people who look up and see simplicity and dismiss it. But that's inevitable. People who pioneer something are jeered, praised, then copied and misrepresented. Stravinsky's Rites of Spring was a notorious flop then became a legendary work. The Seagram is a feat of brave innovation that represents a marriage of Old World idealism  and New World pragmatism. Every time I walk past I see a halo around it.