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Apparently Sunday is the Metro sections Bloomberg real estate day. Last week we learned about the townhouse that Mike is buying to house his philanthropic foundation and this week we learn about how 731 Lexington Avenue, aka 151 East 58th, aka 1 Beacon Court, aka the Bloomberg Building got its many names.
"People thought of it as Alexander's, and we had to come up with something brand new, something significantly different," Melvyn H. Blum, executive vice president of Vornado, explained three years ago. "Our team — the owners; marketing, design and advertising consultants — struggled for a year or so and threw out thousands of ideas."First, we looked at history and at names associated with the block: the Lexington Opera House/Terrace Garden, Finkenberg's Furniture, Liederkrantz Hall, Daniel Winken's Brewery, the Lido Bowling Recreation Arena and Proctor's Pleasure Palace, a theater," he said, in an interview for an article in The New York Times in 2003. "We also looked for significant historic architectural buildings — for example, a palace in Spain or France with a courtyard or tower. At one point we considered the Pantheon."
In the end, "'Beacon' was inspired by the illumination of the upper stories of the tower, and 'Court' by the courtyard." (pictured). And yet for all of that, its still the Bloomberg Building through-and-through. To prove the point, "a spokeswoman for the Postal Service said mail addressed to the Bloomberg Building in ZIP code 10022 would arrive promptly."
Photo of the 1 Beacon Court courtyard by plemeljr via Contribute.
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Gee, the developers overlooked a lot of interesting history. While Liederkrantz ("Singing Society") Hall was built by German immigrants as a community center, it's use changed over the years. In the '50s and '60s (just before its demolition), it was used by CBS as studios for producing TV soap operas. The developers had historic reasons to dub their tower "The Guiding Light" or more provocatively, "The Secret Storm."
How do I know? Well, my mother was the Production Assistant (i.e., producer's gofer) for "Secret Storm" in the early sixties. I remember acompanying her to Liederkrantx Hall and asking about the name.