The Seagram Building, an occupancy app
subject to occasional updates here, is
wholly owned by a figure with a PR de-
partment capable of calling in a colum-
nist from the Business section of The
New York Times within days of drawing
the disgust of all New York. The fruit
of that processing can be imbibed at
the paper's website under the title,
Despite Record Prices, RFR Goes on a Manhattan Buying Spree
and the news is thrilling. Not merely
debauched, this building is set to be
delivered from untrendiness, down to
a food service tenancy of immovably
unyielding quality. But this is not a
publicity scam about hip chow, and be-
spoke floral fantasies. This is about
jobbing a newspaper for the price of
an interview. It's puff-piece pabulum,
down to the miraculous peaks of price
its protagonist will scale, to dazzle
chauffeurs with garage amenities. At
worst, he'd have us see him as a one-
man tenant roster of Mr Liebling's en-
dearing Jollity Building, a Broadway
bilker's paradise, where the highest
praise you can accord someone is to
say, 'He has promoted some very smart
people.'
There's no assessment of his financial
performance - more or less, the only
excuse for a Business column; but ood-
les, instead, on how he dazzles the
bourgeoisie at home and in town, with
antics of compulsive distraction. The
man owns the Lever Building, not the
Lever brand. Now he has his whitewash,
without the Sunlight. We make no mis-
take, to remember Liebling also on the
Press and its docilities in such report-
ing: This is an economic process, like
the displacement of oranges from "orange
drink."
Julie Satow
Square Feet
A Column
September 16, 2014
The New York Times©
A.J. Liebling
The Sweet Science
and Other Writings
The Jollity Building
1941
The Press
1961
The Library of America
op. cit.
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