How did you get design on the federal agenda?
During the Inaugural parade in 1961, President Kennedy rode up Pennsylvania Avenue and waved left and right, as it were. And he noticed, to the right, there was just nothing there. The city had emptied out–in literal fact, there was only one residence between the Capitol and 15th Street. The president said, this doesn’t look like a capital. We made up a commission on Pennsylvania Avenue, and at [Labor Secretary] Arthur Goldberg’s encouragement, I wrote a one-page “Principles of Federal Architecture.” Just one page. And 40 years later, it has worked. Pennsylvania Avenue is alive and thriving.
You’re very patient.
I have a little crack about that, which is: if you don’t have 40 years to spare, don’t get involved with urban renewal.
The General Services Administration is now known for design excellence.
Well, that’s what the principles call for–they say we should build the best work of the moment. I used to say at the time that you build whatever the “whisky trust” is building.
The whisky trust? You mean what great private patrons like the Bronfman family built?
Yes, they’d just put up the Seagram Building in New York. The GSA has stuck with those principles–you don’t get many documents that last 40 years.
What about your efforts to put a new Penn Station in the old McKim, Mead and White post office in New York?
Well, we have the money, we have a glorious design and we now have, in principle, the agreement from the post office–it will take another six months or so to get through the endless details with the lawyers. But I’m a commissioner, by golly, of the Pennsylva-nia Station Redevelopment Commission. You will see it in about five years.
