The New Sotheby's Flagship Sets An Opening Date

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — After more than two years of planning and renovations, Madison Avenue's iconic Breuer Building is reopening on Nov. 8, this time as the new Sotheby's flagship auction house and gallery space.

The formidable building is art history in its own right. The inverted brutalist ziggurat, completed by Marcel Breuer in 1966, has served as the Whitney Museum of American Art, and then as the temporary home of The Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art after the Whitney relocated downtown in 2014.

The first show on view will be an exhibition for its marquee auctions of modern and contemporary art, which will be held the week of Nov. 17, followed by pieces for "Luxury Week" on Dec. 5, according to the auction house's magazine.

Along with art and auction space, the beloved building will also include a new restaurant from the team behind La Mercerie, which serves inventive French food in SoHo.

The Sotheby's galleries will be free and open to the public.

Inside the building

The building, designed by Marcel Breuer and completed in 1966 for the Whitney, features a brutalist concrete and steel exterior hovering above a glass ground floor, which sharply contrasts against the district's 19th-century townhouses.

On the inside, the building has much warmer tones, with open floor plans and light wood complimenting the iconic marquee lights surrounded by silver discs studding the ceilings.

The building's unique exterior and interior has been preserved, since, the building was designated as an individual landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in late May. (More on that from Patch here).

Breuer first trained in Germany as a Bauhaus carpenter, where he designed the still-popular Wassily chair in the 1920s, before coming to the United States just before World War II, according to the Commission.

Breuer later also built the landmarked Begrisch Hall in 1961 at what is now Bronx Community College, according to the Commission.

Sotheby's bought the building in 2023 for a reported $100 million.

The new Sotheby's headquarters is located at 945 Madison Ave. in Manhattan.