Northwestern National life Insurance Company - Alumni

01/01/2025

08/27/2024

Here's a follow-up from a comment left this week concerning the lobby's art sculpture, [ “Sunlit Straw”, a sculpture by Harry Bertoia]

Joanne McLellan Marker wrote:
"I never noticed the art piece overhead until I took an art history course through Minneapolis Community College (classes held in this building)."

(It's currently for sale, here's the details)

Lobby, “Sunlit Straw”above, a sculpture by Harry Bertoia

Harry Bertoia (Italian/American, 1915-1978). Monumental 45 foot sculpture titled "Sunlit Straw," 1964-65, comprised of thousands of interlocking brass-coated steel rods in seven segments. Six segments average approximately seven feet in length with one smaller segment measuring approximately three feet in length. The six longer segments each have a lift hook along the top for installation.

Designed and installed specifically for the Northwestern National Life Building, now known as Voya Financial 20 Washington. According to promotional materials developed for the building's opening, "Bertoia gave up all other work for a year to concentrate on the sculpture, which in appearance suggests the gold grain of harvest time."

This referenced directly to John Pillsbury whose office on the top floor contained a second Bertoia sculpture.

Harry Bertoia is known for his large-scale metal sculptures, which demonstrate his impressive blend of artistic vision and technical skill.

Born in 1915 in San Lorenzo, Italy, Bertoia moved to the United States in 1930 to stay with his older brother in Detroit. He enrolled in Cass Technical High School, where he studied jewelry making, and was immediately taken with the technical and artistic aspects of the craft. Following his high school graduation, he enrolled in the Art School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts. After one year of study there, he received a scholarship to the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

At Cranbrook, he helped reopen the school's metal shop, and became friends with many influential designers of the day, including Ray and Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen, and Florence Knoll. These friendships helped Bertoia to break into a successful design career, creating furniture with the Eameses and Knolls for their successful companies. He began studying welding during this period, a skill that soon would become a cornerstone of his artistic practice.

Following professional success as a designer, he turned to sculpture full-time. Putting the metalworking skills gained earlier in his career to good use, he created massive metal constructions, using welded pieces to create dazzling forests of abstract forms. These works soon gained recognition throughout the art world, and he received many commissions for museums and public buildings.

The present work is a stunning example of Bertoia's public art. Visually imposing, the sculpture catches the light and draws the eye, welcoming the viewer into the building. Its subtle depiction of straw is a testament Bertoia's ability as a storyteller, referencing the history and residents of the building and city without losing its modern edge.
Total; height: 14 ft x width: 45 ft x depth: 40 in.

08/27/2024

Northwestern National Life Building

~From Wikipedia

The Northwestern National Life Building, later known as the ReliaStar Building, then known as ING 20 Washington and now known as Voya Financial 20 Washington, is an office building located in the Gateway District of Minneapolis. It was designed by Minoru Yamasaki as the headquarters of the Northwestern National Life Insurance Company and was opened in 1965.[1] The building was constructed to replace the Northwestern National Life Insurance Company Home Office near Loring Park, which had become too small for the number of employees in the company.[2]

The building features an 85 foot (26 m) portico that serves as the visual terminus for the Nicollet Mall.[1] Yamasaki said that his design was intended to be "appropriate to an office building, monumental and dignified, yet graceful." The building is framed by about 63 slender quartz-faced concrete columns. He said the porch at the main entrance would be "delicate" and "a delight to walk through". Yamasaki's touches also included reflective pools and landscaping, and he claimed he was designing "a park with a building in it".[3]

Architecture critic Larry Millett calls it, "a temple to the gods of underwriting, built by an insurance company and mixing luxury and high camp in way that, say, Liberace would have appreciated" and "a high point of 1960s modernism in Minneapolis."[1]

The company had 475 employees working in the home office in 1964, when this building opened. In 1978, the company had 850 employees, with some working in nearby offices because the main building had been occupied to capacity. In 1978, Northwestern National Life announced plans to build a 20-story office tower across Marquette Avenue, which became 100 Washington Square. That building was designed to have two-thirds of its space available to rent to other tenants.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwestern_National_Life_Building

08/27/2024

"We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there."
―Pascal Mercier

C**n Rapids Dam, Mississippi River

08/27/2024

Greetings everyone!

Hope we're all a having a great summer, my apology for not being as active on this page as I should. I've been managing too many groups for myself and others.

I'm thinking about promoting this page again using Facebook, I tried it once and received some good numbers. Any suggestions that you may have please IM or place in the comments.

Take care and thank you being a friend or a follower.

Carl

08/26/2024

Where's all our NWNL alumni its time to☑️in..