March
30
New York Publishing Headquarters Dazzle
Last week as I rushed from meeting to meeting in New York City, I kept entering the magnificent portals of architecturally significant headquarters of publishing giants with fabulously designed commissaries full of anxious employees trying to hang on to their gigs. How many jobs at Hearst, Conde Nast and The New York Times could have been saved with the billions spent on changing the Manhattan skyline? Staffers at Barry Diller's stunning IAC Building at 18th and 10th, designed by Frank Gehry, are worried about the economy like everyone else: but relative to print publishing, the online future looks bright.
Sadly, I was not able to photograph my tour of NYC's fab new towers, as I drowned my Nikon Coolpix with a leaky water bottle in my purse. I took the battery out of my pocket camera and aired it out, but the damage was done—my friends at Popular Mechanics say that I should have put rice inside to soak up the moisture. Now I know.
When I visited Renzo Piano's stunning 14th floor NYT commissary, staff reductions were announced that very day. (Poynter.org posted a letter by by the late John Walter, former executive editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and founding editor of USA Today, here, in which he argued that three people are to blame for the death of newspapers.)
At the ecologically-correct Hearst Tower on 8th Avenue and 57th Street (top), stunning escalators surrounded by a waterfall rise to a high-ceiling dining room where diners line up for meals prepared by short order cooks and sushi chefs.
The Conde Nast building at 4 Times Square features a Gehry-designed 4th floor dining room where the first orange booth is kept open for S.I. Newhouse, Jr.; Vogue's Anna Wintour (who inspired Meryl Streep's character in The Devil Wears Prada) rarely shows up, while Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter can be spotted on occasion at a yellow table. The guy I hoped to see: The New Yorker's resident Godard expert Richard Brody, hired by old pal David Remnick to edit movie listings, who's now making his mark via his often arcane film blog, The Front Row. No such luck.
[From top, Hearst, IAC, NY Times, and Conde Nast towers, and Conde Nast dining room.]
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bluddy tourists with their bluddy cameras....
(wanders away mutterring, shaking his head)
Posted by: Ramesh | March 30, 2009 at 11:10 PM
I'll take NYC over LA anyday.
Posted by: Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist! | March 31, 2009 at 07:10 AM
me?
ojai and santa barbara.. the big sur...anyday..
Posted by: Ramesh | March 31, 2009 at 07:57 PM