City Desk: On Broadway

AN odd little building just got a lot less odd. For years the southwest corner of Union Square Park was anchored by Paterson Silk, a fabric and notions store—a low-slung brick building fronted by a small tower. The roof of the tower slanted down in back, as if the tower were raising its eyebrows. The tower was girdled in bright yellow metal, covered with dense black and red signage, which leant it a huckstering energy, like the front page of an ethnic newspaper. But then one day late in the Nineties, Odd Job Trading, a chain of close-out stores, rented the space, unpeeled the yellow metal, and revealed a tower of glass, designed by (of all people) Morris Lapidus.

Morris Lapidus, architect of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, the only man to please both James Bond and thousands of homosexuals, had built this cold-weather jeu d’esprit in 1953. When a reporter for the New York Times called to interview him about the restoration, Lapidus at first did not remember his handiwork, then recalled “that little glass tower.” He added: “I did it as an attentiongrabber . . . I’m delighted to hear it’s going back to what it was.” For a few years the glass tower calling the attention of pedestrians to the bargains within was the world’s tiniest skyscraper. Now it’s been shaved off.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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AN odd little building just got a lot less odd. For years the southwest corner of Union Square Park was anchored by Paterson Silk, a fabric and notions store—a low-slung brick building fronted by a small tower. The roof of the tower slanted down in back, as if the tower were raising its eyebrows. The tower was girdled in bright yellow metal, covered with dense black and red signage, which leant it a huckstering energy, like the front page of an ethnic newspaper. But then one day late in the Nineties, Odd Job Trading, a chain of close-out stores, rented the space, unpeeled the yellow metal, and revealed a tower of glass, designed by (of all people) Morris Lapidus.

Morris Lapidus, architect of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, the only man to please both James Bond and thousands of homosexuals, had built this cold-weather jeu d’esprit in 1953. When a reporter for the New York Times called to interview him about the restoration, Lapidus at first did not remember his handiwork, then recalled “that little glass tower.” He added: “I did it as an attentiongrabber . . . I’m delighted to hear it’s going back to what it was.” For a few years the glass tower calling the attention of pedestrians to the bargains within was the world’s tiniest skyscraper. Now it’s been shaved off.