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In the meantime, Saarinen had died. I didn't want to get back into the office--his office was being moved from Bloomfield, Michigan to Haddam, Connecticut, and it was just not the time to go back into that. A designer that I knew and thought very highly of and did a lot of work for me--that is, for CBS, but through my office--in fact, did my office at 485 Madison Avenue--had retired. Her name had been Florence Knoll and she married a banker in Miami, by the name of Bassett.

She was living in Miami, and I called her and told her that I wanted her to come up and see whether I could persuade her to come back into the business and do the building; that she would have a free hand. She lived with Eero--not as adults, but as children. When her father and mother both--her mother died very young, I think. Her father was Swiss, and I guess her mother was, too. But somehow the two kids, Eero and Florence, were in school together at Cranbrook Academy, and she lived with the Saarinens and knew Eero very well and had great respect for him and he for her.

So I knew there would be no problem with the firm if I brought her in. And she did the interiors. Every office except the Board room and Paley's office and his dining room. The rest of it was all done with--Shue [?] Knoll [?] was her name. Her maiden name was Schultz [?]. Then she married Hans Knoll, and he committed suicide or was killed and then she married Hood Bassett. And that's how we finally got the building together. Oh, I tell you.

What a story!