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With Martha Stewart's new morning show debut this morning, as well as her version of The Apprentice - with more fresh flowers! - next Wednesday, Gothamist has been thinking about how her offices at the Starrett-Lehigh Building on West 26th Street (the massive brick and windowed structure that takes up a block at West 26th Street and Eleventh Avenue) have been transformed into television heaven. Because it's not just the studio for the show, but also where the Apprentice contestants are living! In the current issue of In Touch (uh, yes, we're ashamed), there are pictures of how the warehouse space has been converted for reality living; it all seems very tasteful and Martha, though the sleeping areas might not have windows (but we can't totally tell). We remember the Starrett-Lehigh Building when it was a hotbed of dot-com activity, most notably Inside.com, and the jobs offers were flying out of there...but Gothamist still wasn't convinced that the late-night shuttle van would really be that effective in pre-Crobar 2000. We're partial to the SLB, but what would you pick, living on West 26th and 11th Avenue or at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue?
Gawker liveblogged today's episode of Martha: "Opening with a monologue. 'I am unfettered, I am free, no ankle bracelets.' Explains that all producers and staff have fake ankle bracelets, which comes off more uncomfortable than funny." Last year, some folks visited the SLB through Open House New York, like WhatISee and Youngna. Here's more info on the building from NYC Architecture. People generally have a chance to visit for photo shoots or weddings, and if you do get an invite for something at 601 West 26th Street, do go: The views go on forever.
Photograph from Nayantara's Flickr photostream
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I worked at the SLB for a while. It was terrible. The best thing you could say about it was that they let Law & Order film there, so dotcoms that were failing could make some money renting out their spaces for shoots and you knew that at least some of the bodies that paramedics carried out of there were probably fake. Two of my colleagues were sexually assaulted in the building, and our boss always insisted that we leave in groups and take taxis home or to the train. Most of the time we took taxis just to avoid the bitter wind off the river. The shuttle might as well not have existed for anyone not on its very precise and narrow schedule, which was most of us. The management stored piles of garbage outside the offices, so the whole place reeked and there were roaches everywhere. Some people left at lunchtime to use bathrooms outside the building because the ones in the building were so bad.
The sample sales from all the clothing designers were kind of cool, though. Not cool enough to make up for the rest of it, but still pretty cool.