Soon after completing Manhattan's Seagram Building, Mies designed the three towers near Branch Brook Park, north of Downtown Newark and adjacent University Heights and Interstate 280.

The Pavilion and Colonnade Apartments possess exceptional importance in the 20th century social history of Newark, urban planning and development, and Modernist architecture.

The immediate surrounding area has New Jersey's highest concentration of historic landmarks, including Plume House (c.1725), State Street Public School (c.1845), House of Prayer (c.1850), Branch Brook Park (c.1895), Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart (c.1898-1954), Newark Broad Street Station (c.1903), and St. Lucy's Church (c.1926), all of which are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

[11] One of the 20th century's most influential architects, Mies van der Rohe, collaborated with the legendary developer Herbert Greenwald to these towers in Newark among other projects, such as the 860–880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago, the Seagram Building in New York City, and Lafayette Park, Detroit.

Mies’ Colonnade Apartments, with its reflective glass skin, majestically stands above the treetops of Frederick Law Olmsted's Branch Brook Park in the west.

These towers were built with reinforced concrete columns to reduce costs, while a skin of glass and prefabricated aluminum moderated the buildings' internal temperature.