The CBS Radio Division was once located in the new headquarters building, which opened just a year before I went to work there. The local AM and FM radio studios were situated on the 16th and 17th floors along with the CBS Radio Stations News Service (CBSRNS), which distributed my Book Beat feature and others. All the radio network executives' offices were on the same floors, and perhaps a few more. To be legendary broadcast news stars Ed Bradley and Charles Osgood were among my fellow workers.
There was a fancy retuarant on the ground floor with the unimaginative name 'The Ground Floor," which few of us at CBS could afford.
The cafeteria was on the 20th floor (51/20 Club) but, except for vending machines, was open only on weekdays, along with a doctor and nurses, and the CBS company store, which sold employee-discounted merchandise made by CBS owned or affiliated divisions, such as Sony, Columbia Records, Fender guitars, Steinway Pianos, New York Yankees, Fawcett magazines, Harcourt books, etc. When they hired me I was sent up to the doctor who gave me a physical and cleared me for employment. I also took my eye tests up there which saved me a longer time in line at the DMV. They also gave shots if you needed foreign travel.
It was primarily an office building so on weekends they turned off the air conditioning, prompting the two unions I belonged to (AFTRA and the WGA) to file a grievance against the company, which we won. There was nothing like broadcasting on the radio in your underwear because it was so hot and the windows couldn't be opened.
The one suicide at the building I know of occurred in the stairwell. One of our desk assistants overdosed in a locked bathroom stall. I found him and somehow dragged him out and called 911. He survived but the company didn't keep him on. We had constant bomb threats and the NYPD's bomb squad made regular sweeps and got to be almost like family.
There were two banks of elevators, one a local which stopped at every floor. The other an express which stopped at the 20th floor before becoming a local to the top. I was once stuck in the local after finishing my work on a Sunday night. It came to an abrupt stop between floors, and I had to use the elevator phone to call security. They forced the doors open after three hours and I was able to crawl out. Later, I put in for three hours of overtime with the notation, "stuck in elevator." And nobody asked me a word about it. Another time the elevator somehow took me to the basement and not back up. The only door out was an emergency one, which sounded when opened. There was no phone in the basement, so I opened the emergency door and went outside into a driving rainstorm. Security caught me and brought me into the lobby for interrogation. Everyone was drenched and I was apologetic. So embarrassing.
I once rode the elevator with Mr. Paley, founder of the company. He was carrying two briefcases and said to me, "Will you please press 37?" I did and got off at 20 without our saying another word. Later I took his biography up to his office and asked the secretary if she would have Mr. Paley autograph it for me. She did and he did, and I have the book in my library.
The company sold the entire radio division, the network and all the stations. It's now owned by Audacy, a Philadelphia firm, which recently declared bankruptcy. They also sold off all of its divisions, leaving only the TV network, which they eventually sold to Paramount. CBS no longer exists as such, only the name, for what little that's now worth. It was once a great and influential company, but (as of 2024) I still get my pension check every month.
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Architect Eero Saarinen didn't live to see the completion of the building he designed, the great CBS headquarters building in Manhattan, which opened in 1966. Saarinen, who designed the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, died of a brain tumor at the age of fifty-one in 1961. The thirty-eight story building, known as Black Rock because of its dark granite exterior (as well as a play on the well-known 1955 film Bad Day at Black Rock), was completed by Saarinen's colleagues, who worked closely with CBS President Frank Stanton.
Saarinen
Newsradio88 occupied the sixteenth floor of Black Rock until its operations were moved to the CBS Broadcast Center in 2000. CBS-founder William Paley's offices were one floor below the top floor, where the corporate lawyers were installed. Paley was afraid the roof might leak and damage the expensive modern art gracing his office. Better the lawyers wet than his art.
Black Rock before it became Black Rock. The photo, which shows the excavation site, was taken by the late Jay Chichton, a technical director at CBS-TV who was an audio operator for the daytime soap The Guiding Light. CBS gave Jay a $100 prize for the photo. Courtesy of Ray Sills.
But behind that beautiful building is concrete and steel! And the building's guts were the work of CECO (Concrete Engineering Company), founded in Omaha in 1912. Its founder, C. Louis Meyer, discovered a newly-efficient concrete construction system using steel forms that could be applied over again instead of the wood and tile traditionally left abandoned within the structure. CECO's work can be found in the Lincoln Tunnel and San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
In the 1960s, as work on the CBS Building progressed, CECO boasted that it poured one floor every four days.
CECO's magazine ad [below], circa 1965, depicts a photo [middle] showing an aerial view of work in progress on the CBS Building.
click to enlarge
click to enlarge
CECO is no longer the same company. It divested itself of its steelmaking division in the 1970s, is now privately owned, and bills itself as the nation's largest concrete subcontractor. But the CBS Building remains!
Front doors / photo by Don Swaim
Thanks to John Landers and Ray Sills for helping with this article.
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