I had a meeting with the Associated Press in New York on Friday, and it turned out to be the last meeting held in their space at 50 Rockefeller Center. Kinda cool to be there at the close of a 66-year run. When we arrived and told the guard we were there for a meeting with AP, he looked at us like were were nuts.
“They moved. Are you certain it’s here?”
“I’m positive,” I told him. He called the person we were meeting with and we were ushered up, but not before they went through my suitcase at security.
50 Rock is a very cool, art deco building. It’s also right there in the thick of things near Times Square. It would be sort of a drag to move somewhere else.
The AP office had the look of a space in transition. Barren walls. Piles of boxes. Electrical cords that connect nothing. Hard to believe this was the brain center for coverage of major events during the past six decades.
The meeting came and went and an era ended.