Building Material

The Board of Directors rejected Eero Saarinen's first design, an inverted pyramid. The ravine concept, which was approved, was first presented in June 1958.

The Administrative Center was not designed to be a building, but a campus. Two lakes cover four acres. The front lake includes a water recirculation system for the air-conditioning system. To add to the natural landscape, 1,148 trees and 4, 861 shrubs were planted.

History of Deere & Company's World Headquarters

In the mid-1950s, William Hewitt, then President of Deere & Company, was under pressure to move his company's headquarters from Moline, Ill., to New York or San Francisco. Hewitt resisted the idea, but agreed that if the firm were to remain in Moline, it needed a distinctive new building for its head office.

In 1956, Hewitt selected Eero Saarinen to design this new headquarters, a choice Hewitt made after careful consideration. Hewitt first visited two buildings that Saarinen had designed, the new auditorium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the General Motors Technical Center near Detroit, Michigan, before settling on the architect to design his company's new building.

Hewitt emphasized that, while he wanted a headquarters that was unique, it must reflect the character of the company and its employees. "The several buildings should be thoroughly modern in concept but should not give the effect of being especially sophisticated or glossy. Instead, they should be more 'down to earth' and rugged," he wrote.

What Saarinen designed was a complex of three buildings. The main office building, which is seven stories high, rises from the floor of a wooded ravine and faces two ponds. A glass-enclosed bridge connects the main building to a product-display building and a 400-seat auditorium.

Saarinen satisfied Hewitt's instruction that the buildings look down to earth by using Cor-ten steel for the exterior structure of the building. Cor-ten®, a material that resists corrosion by forming a protective coating of iron oxide, develops an earthy color as it ages, much like newly plowed soil. Developed for railroad track construction and other uses, this marked the first use of Cor-ten® in an architectural application.

Tragically, Saarinen never saw his vision become a reality. He died in 1961, just four days after the contracts for the new building were signed. Kevin Roche, one of his associates, completed the project.

The new building, which initially housed about 900 employees, opened its doors for business on April 20, 1964.