Milo Kleinberg and MKDA: Six Decades in Design

Page 37

CHAPTER 4:

KING OF THE GARMENT DISTRICT

Working at a borrowed desk in the office of a general contractor he knew, Natey Kandal, Kleinberg set out to take on the Garment District single-handedly. He had his own excellent reputation, something of a following, and many brokers as contacts he cultivated over the years working under Gerstl’s tutelage.

Clients trusted him and never hesitated to recommend him for other jobs. It was another skill he had, however, that got him his big break: he spoke German. When word got around that Lufthansa, the German state airline, needed a firm to design new offices and streetlevel Fifth Avenue ticket center, a broker recommended

“I had good leads and I wouldn’t have gone into business without them,” Kleinberg says. “The brokers were the ones who recommended me.” He was known as hard-headed and detail-oriented, never leaving a job site until everything met his specifications. He also had a vision of what he wanted his firm to become. “When I founded the firm in 1959, I established a set of guiding principles that would form the foundation of all of its work,” Kleinberg explains. “These principles— commitment, focus, excellence and integrity—continue to guide our work decades later.” Interior of the Lufthansa ticket office. KING OF THE GARMENT DISTRICT

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