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exert a kind of leadership. But somebody had to, you know, exert.
I thought he was very interested, though, in the building.
In the what?
In the building. Black Rock. Which are you talking about?
Well, that piece of property stood idle for two years, because we couldn't agree on architects or what we were going to do with the building. Oh, no. That was a wretched period.
I'd like to hear a little bit about that actually.
Well. When I came in as president, in the office that I moved into as president, there was a platform in the office. The office was an idle office--hadn't been used. When I moved in, there was a large table on stilts and there was a model of an office building. It was the model of the building that was going to be built at 58th and Park Avenue.
I think we'd long-since given up the options on the land and so forth. I had it moved out, and the reason we didn't build at that time was that the then-executive vice president, who was the second guy, and Paley couldn't agree on whether to go ahead or not. I remember him telling me: “If you can build that building, you're a better man than I am.” Because he was fed up about it.
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