Chapter 5 The 1970s

CHAPTER 5: THE 1970s

The building at 1411 Broadway, located on the site of the old Metropolitan Opera House, was a sleek, modern structure that was a forerunner to many more buildings like it in Midtown. The apparel industry it housed was a market Kleinberg knew well; his work there and elsewhere in the Garment District spoke volumes to tenants about how well he understood their business. His clients were top brands in the clothing sector, mostly women’s, and included Jonathan Logan, Bobby Brooks and College Town. Articles continued to appear in Women’s Wear Daily, the apparel industry bible.

“That was a big one,” recalls Jeffrey of the success marketing 1411 Broadway. “He got client after client after that.”

Eventually, Kleinberg was able to take his ideas from apparel and apply them in other industries. He designed retail stores for such high-end brands as Royal Copenhagen and legendary Danish silversmith Georg Jensen, as well as the first bank commissions the firm did, like Citibank, and later Sterling Bank. Financial institutions would eventually become a very large part of the business and include such venerable companies as ABN AMRO, Guggenheim Partners, HSBC, and Mudrick Capital.

The challenge at 1411 Broadway was how to market the new, large floor plates. Likewise at Helmsley Spear’s 1 Penn Plaza, which opened in 1972. Tenants came in all sizes and the large spaces coming onto the market didn’t suit all of them, nor did they want to be landlords themselves and sublease. To Kleinberg, the solution was obvious: divide them up in an attractive and compelling way so they would appeal to more companies focused on economizing and minimizing risk. 1 Penn Plaza, among the first buildings Innovative pre-builts, a whose large floor plates were divided up to appeal to smaller tenants.

relatively new phenomenon in office leasing, were increasingly important, not just to the company’s bottom line, but throughout the real estate industry in the 1970s as the economy slowed.

Kleinberg’s idea of carving out smaller spaces to reach more tenants caught on in smaller buildings, too, like 205 West 29th Street, and marketing those spaces as pre-builts turned out to be transformative for the industry in the ’70s. Twenty years into the 21st century, it’s an idea that has been adopted by workers in the gig economy who don’t have the financial resources for larger spaces, or who can use technology to run a lean operation and don’t need the space. The idea behind popular co-working spaces like WeWork, Ensemble and Amsterdam-based Spaces is based on Kleinberg’s 50-year-old idea of smaller spaces with shared resources, except the newest iteration sometimes comes with an espresso machine and a yoga instructor. In 2018, one rents only the real estate one needs, and it can be as small as a single desk.

It was the development of the pre-builts and turnkeys back in the ’70s that solidified the reputation of Milo Kleinberg Design Associates which, with the firm M. Arthur Gensler Jr. & Associates, now Gensler, were the true innovators in the field of commercial interior design. According to Michael, their firm didn’t grow as quickly as Gensler, which was founded in 1965, because his father never wanted growth for growth’s sake. He wanted to

Far left, a showroom at 1411 Broadway. Below and left, the New York offices of Gloria Vanderbilt by Murjani jeans, billed as the first designer jeans in the world.

keep it personal; it grew exponentially, but on Milo Kleinberg’s terms.

“My father had the drive and he had a huge fire in him, along with the design talent and business acumen,” Michael says. “Growth was steady and measured.”

Jeffrey was the first of the two Kleinberg sons to join the firm, which he did initially as a summer intern when he was about 16 years old. “When my friends were enjoying their free time in the summer, my father told me I was coming to work for him.”

When not in class at McBurney High School on West 63rd Street, Jeffrey was in the office learning how to draw, then how to draft. He accompanied his father to various jobs, drafted some of the projects and served as right hand to the contractor. “That’s how I got my experience,” Jeffrey explains.

Jeffrey Kleinberg, IIDA, attended the New York Institute of Technology School of Architecture and continued to work for his father during time off from his studies. There were about 10 people

Below and left, MKDA offices at 11 East 26th Street.

working in the firm at the time, business was growing and there was plenty for Jeffrey to do. Kleinberg spent a great deal of time teaching his son the business, but could be voluble if the work wasn’t up to the standards of the patriarch who, by this time, had about 25 years’ experience and was going from strength to strength. “He was like Steve Jobs at Apple who yelled to get people motivated,” Jeffrey remembers. “His style of teaching was indeed motivating, although sometimes not easy to deal with. That said, I learned a lot.”

After an initial stint in the office learning the ropes, Jeffrey’s assignments took him out into the field a great deal, and into the different job sites where he absorbed everything his father, the clients and the contractors could impart. He hated seeing things not getting done, so he often took on the tasks of installing door hardware or climbing ladders to screw track heads onto track lighting, once installing as many as 90 one evening after hours. “Those job sites were where I learned most of my skills,” Jeffrey says. His father would teach him to focus on details every step of the way, how things were made, perspective, and what to look for in high quality craftsmanship. But the elder Kleinberg’s eye and artistic talent were even bigger influences.

“He was a great designer,” Jeffrey says.

Michael joined two years later, after working in the firm over the course of a few summers when he wasn’t

Showroom for the Jack Wasserman brand, left; above, top, the Seventh Avenue showroom for Metzger coats and, below, an accessories showroom.

washing dishes at Camp B’nai B’rith in Lake Como, Pennsylvania. He had earned a Bachelor of Science degree in architecture at the City College of New York, and was eager to get to work.

“I had a certain drive and I jumped right in,” Michael says. “My father taught me how to work with brokers, building owners and clients, and I loved doing that.”

As with Jeffrey, much of Michael’s initial work at the firm took place outside the office, with Kleinberg as a willing instructor. “From day one, he was a good teacher for me,” Michael recalls.

“I was basically involved in everything—measuring spaces, meeting with senior people—from the very beginning,” he says. “It was all very rapid-fire.”

Above and left, apparel showroom with recessed ceiling and marble inlay flooring.

Ladies’ apparel showroom.

There is a natural division of labor between the brothers today, with Jeffrey focused on design and Michael on the numbers and relationships with brokers and clients. However, the brothers’ architecture credentials are a definite plus in a company where the founder sets the bar for being highly competent in all aspects of the business. “You need to know everything,” Michael says.

According to Jeffrey, being alongside his father was the best schooling for all that. “He was an all-around talented guy who could make changes on the job site because he was so good at design, but also because he had such a great relationship with the contractors he worked with,” he recalls. “He was amazing.”

“He was an exemplary project manager who would never leave the job site until he covered every inch of it,” he adds.

Jeffrey was present in the summer of 1974, when Kleinberg interviewed Jack Maron, a graduate of Pratt Institute who, at the time, was working for the firm Slobodian & Sapolsky. Kleinberg hired him immediately as a project manager and designer, and he remained on the staff for more than four decades. Maron distinctly remembers the boss’ favorite mantra: “On budget and on time,” and how each design was unique to the individual client.

“There was nothing cookie-cutter about his approach,” Maron says. “Projects were developed and designed according to the specific need at the time, what worked best, whether it was a showroom or an investment bank, a network of private offices, open space, or a combination of both.”

From the beginning, Maron marveled at how sharp Kleinberg was at coming up with design ideas in what seemed like an endless, innovative stream.

“Milo was intuitive and inventive in his solutions, and had the ability to assess needs up front in a way that would dictate the direction the plans would take,” he says. “After a while I stopped being surprised by his ability, which came from a love of his profession. It’s an art form that he’s great at.”

Maron compares Kleinberg’s ability with colors and textures to his knack for assembling the best team for each job. He recalls how his boss could gauge the temperament of a client and pair him with a compatible team of contractors and members of the MKDA staff. “All that comes into the mix,” he says. “You need absolute harmony between the team working on the project and the client, the client and the contractor, the contractor and his tradesmen.”

“You need the right people, the right project manager, to translate this one-dimensional thing into a threedimensional work,” Maron continues. “Milo was always adept at putting those teams together.”

Lucite seating in a Jack Wasserman apparel showroom. By the mid-’70s, the MKDA team had grown to 10, with Kleinberg as principal and Rhoda Astrachan as the principal interior designer, as she had been since Milo Kleinberg Design Associates was formed in 1959. Maron was Kleinberg’s right-hand man; sons Jeffrey and Michael were making their way, carving out different paths. According to Jeffrey, those paths are complimentary to each other and to the elder Kleinberg.

“My father is in the middle between Michael and me, as if we were two halves of something,” Jeffrey says. “Michael has the more rigid gotta-do-business head and I enjoy sketching, designing, working with the contractors, introducing technology into the practice and overseeing the branding.”

To Maron, the “family” at MKDA extended beyond the unit of the three Kleinbergs; it took in him, Astrachan, and the staff as a whole. “I felt that MKDA was home; it was home for most of the day, and the people who worked there were part of Milo’s family,” he recalls. “That was the atmosphere Milo created: not a family as in blood, but a group of truly dedicated people who worked long hours together, and did what we had to do when we had to do it.”

Sleek modern furniture and a Lucite partition for Gloria Vanderbilt by Murjani.

Metal grids, left and right, are designed to be partitions and fixtures for displaying garments in a Gloria Vanderbilt by Murjani showroom.