Chapter 3 Milo Kleinberg, Designer

Kleinberg’s talent for networking seemed to come as naturally to him as his talent and eye for design. The Jewish immigrant community in New York, many of them German-speaking, was rife with people who had come before him, seen the same struggles and overcame them. Many were a generation older and beginning to reap the rewards of so much hard work in their new home.

One of those was an architect by the name of Max Gerstl. Gerstl was an immigrant like Kleinberg, but he was somewhat older, established professionally and a Czech. He was an architect who, back in his native Prague, specialized in the design of retail stores and was very well known. Now in New York, his growing firm needed help, so he placed a want ad in one of the many, many newspapers published in the city at the time. Kleinberg happened to see it, contacted him, and was immediately summoned for an interview.

Gerstl saw the boy’s talent in just a few rough drawings and wanted to hire him on the spot. The salary was $90 a week, a modest sum, but a far cry from the returns on selling handkerchiefs stoop-to-stoop or the profits from being a soda jerk at the Majestic Hotel. Kleinberg accepted the position and, along with the paycheck, got a marvelous start at designing, as well as everything else that went along with the trade—surveying, drafting, sketching, and calling on clients. On his first day, the newly minted professional took his place at a desk in the small office in a walk-up at 145 West 18th Street, was issued the tools of his trade, a triangle and a T-square, and wasted no time getting to work. He was Gerstl’s only employee. “I took the job and learned everything I could from him,” he recalls.

Kleinberg designed for all the firm’s clients from the very beginning, in addition to selling and networking, which was also part of the job. Gerstl had a small but thriving firm whose contacts for design jobs came from working with real estate brokers around Manhattan, like Cross and Brown. They called him in to design their

tenants’ spaces, make recommendations on how much square footage they needed for their staff, what they might need in the future, and how to expand.

Gerstl had a fine reputation within that marketing framework, which enabled him to attract and retain clients long-term. Once they were on board, however, it fell to Kleinberg to lay the groundwork for all subsequent jobs. “Gerstl sent me out to measure the space and bring back layouts for all the units,” he explains. “He gave me the requirements and I drew it.”

The designer knew from the very beginning with Gerstl that his natural talent for drawing would be the basis of a long, successful career.

“You have to have it in you,” he says. “Either you have it or you don’t.”

Kleinberg’s $90 a week didn’t go far, but he continued to go to the Catskills in the summer, as he had done with his parents as a teenager. He had access to a car, which made the trip up to the resort region a bit easier. Nonetheless, it still took two and a half hours in traffic, which meant Kleinberg had to leave before noon Friday in order to arrive before sundown and the beginning of the Sabbath. “The traffic was unbelievable, even back then. “Stop and go, stop and go, all the way up there,” recalls the designer, who still loves cars and driving his latest Jaguar, a blue 2007 XJ. It was a ride home one weekend that proved fateful—in a good way—for the young designer. His sister, Thea, was staying at a resort later known as the Pioneer Country Club Hotel, where she’d gone for a singles event. A pretty young woman she’d met there, Bertha Friesner, needed a ride back to the city, to Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. It happened to be on Kleinberg’s way home.

He quickly offered transport to the blue-eyed Bertha, who was cute and rather on the petite side. “I never went out with girls taller than me,” he says.

The two discovered they had something of a shared history. Bertha was also an immigrant, German, who came from a farm in Bavaria. She had no siblings. Her

Milo and Bertha.

The Pioneer Country club where Milo and Bertha met.

Bertha, left, Milo, center, and Charlotte Kleinberg.

mother had died in childbirth, leaving the newborn baby girl alone with her father. As was not uncommon for a widower to do in those days, Friesner married his sister-in-law, Hedwig, so she could take care of him and little Bertha. Together the three immigrated to America, sponsored by relatives in Newark, New Jersey.

Kleinberg asked Bertha on a date a few weeks after that first car ride, and they dated for several weeks—until, that is, he got cold feet and broke it off, much to the chagrin of his mother and Bertha. “My mother really pushed me,” he remembers.

The young designer finally gave in and after three weeks, called Bertha to set up an al fresco reunion on a bench in Central Park. They patched things up and were engaged shortly thereafter.

The wedding took place on November 26, 1950, in a Hungarian restaurant called Little Hungary at 257 East Houston Street, with a small group of relatives present. The newlyweds started married life in a small apartment on West 184th Street in Manhattan. It wasn’t a great neighborhood, and Kleinberg had a very long walk to the subway station he needed to get to work. Their son, Jeffrey, was born three years later, on January 20, 1953. It happened to be the day of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s inauguration, thus earning the new arrival the nickname “Little Ike.” With living space suddenly at a premium, the family moved to a larger apartment on 238th Street and Greystone Avenue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. It was a one-bedroom, junior 4. “It was a newer building, but the rent wasn’t much more,” Kleinberg recalls. It was also a shorter walk to the subway and near Van Cortlandt Park. “It was like going home to the country,” he says.

The youngest son, Michael, was born October 19, 1956.

Kleinberg, meanwhile, continued to work for Max Gerstl and the business thrived. Office construction and the local economy were booming throughout the 1950s,

Milo and Bertha and a drawing by Milo on the opening page to his photo album.

Clockwise from left: Milo and Bertha, rear, with Bertha’s parents, Hedwig and Henry Friesner; portrait of the new family with, top row from left, Henry Friesner, Milo and his father, Max Kleinberg, and, bottom row, from left, Charlotte Kleinberg, Bertha and Hedwig Friesner; far right, the bride and groom; center, the wedding invitation.

and the two were very much a part of it thanks, in large measure, to Kleinberg’s talent and a way he had with people. Not just the principals of the companies who hired the team to design their spaces, but with the brokers who linked them to those clients. Everyone liked him because he was honest. “No, you don’t need that much space,” he would tell them, and they would lease a smaller office for less money and have him design it to optimize its use. They trusted him and, without fail, called the firm in to design a larger office when the need arose.

After 12 years of hard work, Kleinberg wanted his due from Gerstl: he wanted to be a full-fledged partner in the firm that flourished thanks to his considerable, natural ability and substantial contribution to the bottom line. He went to Gerstl and asked for a share of the company that might somehow make up for the meager salary. “I am knocking myself out and I want a little part of the business,” he remembers telling Gerstl. “‘I give you a raise,’ was what he said in that Czech accent of his, but it wasn’t enough. And I said, ‘Thank you very much, I’m leaving. I’m giving you notice.’”

With that, he was out the door and Milo Kleinberg Design Associates was up and running. Kleinberg didn’t question himself for a moment, even with the responsibility of a young family in Riverdale.

“When you’re young, you do these things and you’re not afraid,” he says. “I knew what I could do, they already knew me in the Garment District. The brokers knew me, and knew I could show prospective tenants how to best use a space so they would sign a lease.”

“I also knew I had a lot of experience,” he says.

Left to right: new parents with baby Jeffrey, Jeffrey as a child, a young Michael and the two brothers together.

The Lufthansa ticket office, “one of my most beautiful designs,” according to Kleinberg.