Yet all the executives were sitting in this fancy tower and everybody who really did the work was sitting in this other facility.
Seif's office is in Tripoli's tallest and fanciest tower — a hulking glass building topped by a gigantic circular apparatus that was intended as a revolving restaurant but neither revolves nor serves food.
Underscoring its grand ambitions, the firm took space on the 31st floor of 9 West 57th St., one New York's fanciest office towers with commanding views of Central Park.
Several shareholders at the San Remo, one of the fanciest prewar towers on Central Park West, said they were delighted when Steven Spielberg, the director, bought an apartment there.
The neighborhood is not fancy; the tower is sandwiched between the Original Pantry, one of the city's oldest diners, and newer restaurants with names like Zucca and Zita.
The publishing business was concentrated in fancy Midtown office towers until the 1980s, when many publishers moved to lofts and landmark buildings downtown, in SoHo, Chelsea and the Flatiron district.
Rather than simply tearing down the old, and slamming up glass towers and fancy brand name retail outlets into the area, a loose-knit group of socially conscious developers has been trying to save Casco's heritage while helping locals get jobs, and stay in their homes.
The fancier examples come with towers, battlements and a filigree of architraves, but the classic pattern is quite simple: a two-storey cabin surrounded by lawn and fruit trees, roses tumbling over a picket fence.
Like the Alamo, it's not just a quiet sanctuary, but the neighborhood's last barricade against fancy new condominiums literally towering over it, and the gyms and Whole Foods at the flanks.
