Publishers Noted: in which our publisher reviews the building of another publisher.
In May of 2021, author Amanda Lees posted a photo that quickly went viral on Twitter. It was an inside look at the office of the New York Review of Books, at 435 Hudson Street in the West Village: “If someone ever criticizes your tidiness, show them this.” A small flotilla of Macintosh computers sails across a heaving sea of books. Coffee mugs, marked up drafts, and even a wine bottle all bob in the waves. It is not a tidy office.
This fall, the publication moved into a new home: 207 East 32nd Street. A drawing of the new building graces a new tote bag and the cover of its ninety-six-page, sixtieth anniversary issue. Built in 1902 to be a clubhouse for a branch of Tammany Hall, the building reads as a generously proportioned town house, with an elaborate elevation facing south toward 32nd Street. The architect, Robert Lyons, wanted to make it look Parisian by rusticating the base, putting two ornamental balconies on the front, and placing two large mansard windows on the top floor. There are some stone sculptures of lions up there, too, for good measure. It all adds up to an aura of dignified age, a suggestion of longevity and solidity that one would expect from a publication called the New York Review of Books.
But what makes it a fitting home for the magazine is not the architecture, but rather the previous owner, graphic designer Milton Glaser, who bought it in 1965. In 1968, Glaser and editor Clay Felker founded New York Magazine in the building, running it out of the top floor. Rupert Murdoch ousted them from the magazine after a hostile takeover in 1977, but Glaser held on to the building, continuing to work there with his business partner, Walter Bernard, until 2020. Glaser’s best-known piece is the I ♡ NY logo, but he was prolific: over the course of his career, Glaser’s work ranged from an iconic 1966 album cover for Bob Dylan to (with Bernard) a redesign of the Washington Post and the opening credits for Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail. At some point, somebody etched the glass over the entrance with the words, “Art is work.”
On the first floor, the illustrator James McMullan led a studio composed of promising students from the School of Visual Arts, nicknamed “the SVA incubator.” One of them was Leanne Shapton, whose first job in New York was as McMullan’s assistant and who now serves as the Review’s art editor. Shapton actually invited McMullan to draw the building for the cover of the sixtieth anniversary issue. Glaser rented the fourth floor out to artists. It was to the third floor, where Glaser’s office sat, that a team from the Review came for a fateful meeting in 2018. An eponymous foundation had been established in the memory of Review founder Bob Silvers, who had died the previous year, and the editors wanted Glaser to design a logo for it. During the meeting, they noted that their lease was almost up and expressed the wish they could find a place like Glaser’s. “If you need a home, you should take mine,” Glaser replied. Talks began that would culminate in the $7.5 million purchase of the building in October of 2020. Glaser had died that June.
“Finally an architecture magazine that doesn’t just interview celebrities or cost ninety dollars.”
Beyond the historical resonance, there was also a deeply pragmatic element to the move. The magazine’s business team had conducted a survey of what allowed small businesses to survive in the long term. One thing they all had in common: they owned their buildings.
It took another three years to move in. The Review had to bring the place up to code, removing asbestos, installing an elevator, and taking out a steep, narrow staircase at the back. There were lots of unexpected complications. When Russia invaded Ukraine, their (Ukrainian) window supplier shut down. In the end, the Review stripped the entire interior down to the studs. They never feared for their ability to fill the place back up again. The magazine batted down a suggestion from its architects to put bookshelf wallpaper on the wall: it would be redundant. Instead, they plan to put on the walls artwork and posters left behind by Glaser. Glaser’s art will have to fight for space with stuff from the old office, primarily books, boxes of which fill almost the entire fourth floor.
When I visited in October, the staff had big, clean desks and could still see the white sheetrock through their built-in bookcases. But they did not fear the impending flood. Their managing editor, Lauren Kane, told me that the clutter in Lees’s photo was indeed their lodestar. The strategy is to “just leave papers around until we get there.”