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I would have built it on the Bowery in order to get something going, because we just needed space. And I thought we needed a landmark that could be CBS. NBC had Radio City and Time-Life was then emerging as an important part of the communications world, and here we were, sitting with all these little places all over town. Nobody knew who the hell we were. Or where we were.

We took the option on a substantial part of that Sixth Avenue property, and I went ahead to talk with architects about designing the building. I didn't talk much to Bill about that, because I thought I would get some stuff developed before I would talk about it. I got tired of talking things to death; I wanted to have something that I could show him. I had had that experience in building Television City and a couple of other properties. I had no trouble building things outside of New York. New York, you know, that was where he wanted to put his mark.

So I talked to architects--Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. [Wallace K.] Harrison and [Max] Abramowitz. A man from Yale--I can't think of his name now. [Paul Rudolph?] But there were at least half a dozen that I had, and we talked generally about the site. Someplace along in there I hit on the idea that I wanted to bring somebody new into the metropolitan area.

I did know, largely through my work on the building committee at Lincoln Center, Eero Saarinen, and I thought he was a fresh point of view in terms of architecture. He was just then doing the Arch in St. Louis, had the “flying brassiere,” if you will, out at Kennedy and things of that kind. I thought there would be some excitement; he would bring a new style, if you will, into the city and not just do another glass box. Which in the meantime was