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estate wasn't that easy to deal with, and the church had--the downtown side of that building was occupied by the church administrative offices from across the street. That looked like a sticky thing to try to work out of, and as a matter of fact, the Palace Hotel never solved that either. They built behind it, but they didn't tear down the building.

I was going to tear down the brown buildings there. Maybe it would have been a mistake to have done that, but that's--I wanted to stay on Madison Avenue.

For those people who are not in New York, could you describe why Madison Avenue was an important address to you.

I've never liked Fifth Avenue as a site for an office building. I thought Fifth Avenue was retail, and I just didn't see it as the place for us. Also I didn't want to go as splashy as I thought we'd have to go, if we went on Fifth Avenue. On Fifth Avenue I thought we'd have to put up a very fancy front. I thought Madison Avenue had the character of Rue St. Honoré in Paris. I thought it was a great shopping street, and yet it wasn't the Fifth Avenue kind of place.

It had a lot of distinguished companies on Madison Avenue. And I just--as against Broadway, Avenue of the Americas, which I didn't like as a name. Fifth Avenue I didn't. Lexington was too far. So it was--I just loved Madison Avenue. But when we finally decided we had to do something, we simply couldn't find a plot that would work for what I thought we needed.

In the meantime [William] Zeckendorf was in and out of my life and Paley's life on real