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Before last month, you could believe that the Times was never going to go through with it. Yes, the paper had sponsored a major architectural competition a year and a half ago for its new headquarters, on Eighth Avenue, but the design it selected--a shimmering tower of transparent glass by Renzo Piano--was the last thing you would expect to be built by a conservative corporation, let alone the one that publishes America's most serious newspaper. This was a skyscraper for Gianni Agnelli, maybe, but not for Arthur Sulzberger. But, then again, the Arthur Sulzberger who is in charge of the Times today is not the Arthur Sulzberger who was in charge of the paper a generation ago, when it redid its newsroom with fake-wood Formica furniture and orange carpeting. Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., who took over as chairman of the New York Times Company in 1997, has an eye for design, and he saw the disjunction between the way the Times has regarded its own surroundings and the way the paper's critics preach the virtues of great architecture for other people.
Still, even if Sulzberger was behind Piano's unusual skyscraper, he and his colleagues had to figure out how to get the design approved by the city and...