After nearly 84 years of broadcasting from New York City's Municipal Building, WNYC moved to our present location in western Soho. Yet, who would have thought that our home for all those years had been an inspiration to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin? The so-called man of steel was apparently so taken with the colossus of One Centre Street that the main building of Moscow University and six other massive towers known collectively as the "Seven Sisters" were based on it.
Far fetched? Well, we also checked
Stalinist Architecture by the noted Russian journalists Alexi Tarkhanov and Sergei Kavtaradze (L. King, London, 1992). While they don't mention our beloved Muni Building, they do write that the 'Seven Sisters' "...are in some respects similar to the American skyscrapers of the 1930s but with some important differences. Their development and complex design recall Russian seventeenth-century churches..." Hmmm.
See also:
NEW YORK ARCHITECTURE.
The New York City Municipal Building, July 18, 1924, ten days after we went on the air with our call letters on the building. (Photo by
Eugene de Salignac, courtesy of the
NYC Municipal Archives Collection).
