COLUMBUS AVENUE AND THE UPPER WEST SIDE
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview with Robert Quinlan

Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District
2019

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Quinlan – Session 2 of 2
PREFACE

The following is a transcript of the second of two sessions of an oral history interview with
Robert Quinlan conducted by Leyla Vural on March 6, 2019. This interview is part of the
Columbus Avenue and the Upper West Side Oral History Project, sponsored by the Columbus
Avenue Business Improvement District.
Robert Quinlan (born in 1932) is a real estate investor and developer who bought his first
building on Columbus Avenue in the early 1970s. He is the founder and principal of the Quinlan
Development Group and owns Walker, Malloy & Company.
In this interview, Robert Quinlan talks about the J-51 tax abatement program and some of the
properties that he bought and renovated on Columbus Avenue in the 1970s. He recalls the
founding, and naming, of his property management company, Walker, Malloy & Company,
which George Beane (also interviewed as part of this oral history project) ran initially. Quinlan
shares some of his thinking about retail and tells stories about some of his early retail rentals on
the avenue, among them, DDL Foodshow, The Silver Palate, The Natural Source, and Endicott
Booksellers. He tells the story of how he came to develop plans in the early 1980s to build above
the New-York Historical Society and the neighborhood opposition that defeated the project.
Quinlan describes the founding of the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District, and
reflects on his work in the area.
Readers should bear in mind that this is a transcript of an interview and, therefore, does not read
like a polished piece of written prose. The transcript has been edited by the interviewee and is the
final document of record. The audio recording of this interview is not available.
The views expressed in this oral history interview are the interviewee’s alone and do not
necessarily reflect those of the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District.

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Interviewee: Robert Quinlan
Interviewer: Leyla Vural
Interview date: March 6, 2019
Session: 2 of 2
Location: New York, N.Y.
Vural: [00:00:01] I’m going to ask you to introduce yourself by name and something that’s
relevant to this project.
Quinlan: [00:00:11] My name is Robert Quinlan. Before becoming a real estate developer in
New York, Manhattan, I was a partner in a consulting, real estate consulting, firm travelling
different parts of the country on behalf of banks and other institutions which wanted a report on
the feasibility of building a new building or adding an extension or any number of reasons. We
did market research. And having that experience I was able to, when that company was sold to a
Chicago company—and basically as a partner, and my other partners did not want to be part of a
several thousand man group, we were eighteen—we left. We went in different places.
[00:01:08] I had always been interested in renovations in New York because the new buildings,
the new thirty-, forty-, fifty-story buildings at that time were well out of my reach, but renovating
a building or two would not be, even though I didn’t have capital to speak of to start. But I did,
on Columbus Avenue, a block from where we lived on Central Park West. And no one walked
on Columbus Avenue, you walked past Columbus Avenue.
[00:01:45] I think I brought this up in an earlier recording. So, why did one walk past Columbus
Avenue when it was so convenient to all the buildings along Central Park West, most all of
which were very high end with very successful people, large apartments, and quite well-known
and Central Park one block away? No one walked on Columbus Avenue, I have to say, basically
above Seventy-second Street.

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[00:02:15] Lincoln Center had come in in the late sixties and had basically caused a
rehabilitation of Columbus Avenue from 66th Street up to 72nd, but above that was no-man’sland. Why? Because it had been basically taken over in one sense by something, I think I
mentioned, a center for prosthetic devices and wholesale medical, for the trade, medical services.
Well, they were quite bizarre looking in the windows—and three or four storefronts had those
windows with—particularly at night when it was dark. I seem to remember it being dark all the
time.
[00:03:01] A lot of these stores were sealed up with shutters that were solid. You couldn’t see
through them. And a couple of cafés were open, but they didn’t sell anything, interestingly
enough [chuckles]. They did sell drugs, but they didn’t sell food. And there were some bars
which catered to drugs and prostitution, and it was interesting because I did notice on Columbus,
which ended up—which began my career because it was so obvious to me having been around
the United States seeing things no one close could see that it really was ripe for development.
[00:03:46] But the—I don’t remember if I mentioned this—but the automobiles all had New
Jersey plates on them. Much later, when Columbus Avenue was sort of high end and actually
designers wanted to be there and so on, the New Jersey plates returned, but with different
motives and the wives. But it wasn’t like that at the beginning, which was around 1970.
Vural: [00:04:16] So—
Quinlan: [00:04:17] So, anyway, I—what were you going to say?
Vural: [00:04:19] I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—
Quinlan: [00:04:21] No, no, that’s alright.

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Vural: [00:04:22] So, I wanted to ask you about the role of the J-51 tax abatement and how that
helped you as you were buying and renovating new buildings.
Quinlan: [00:04:31] It was quite simple. It was actually a wonderful law in its day, and I think it
still exists in certain parts of the more depressed parts of the city. It was intended, and succeeded
actually, in promoting renovations of dilapidated buildings by eliminating the first liens on any
rental property, which are the city real estate taxes. It eliminated them. And that often—even in
the early days for taxes, they jumped up to where they are today. It basically took twenty,
twenty-five percent of the building’s cash flow before paying expenses as a first lien and when
one got a mortgage, which you always do, the lender had to consider that it was second to any
obligation owed to the City of New York.
[00:05:30] J-51 eliminated that intrusion facing a lender looking at a property. They wouldn’t
look at Columbus Avenue and they wouldn’t look at most of these other areas, which were very
speculative too for financing, construction financing particularly, because it didn’t pencil out, so
to speak, for them and created a risk. But once there was no prior lien representing twenty to
twenty-five percent of the builder’s income, they stepped up. And this often resulted in one
hundred percent financing, or close to it, once the building was completed and rented.
[00:06:16] So, that was an attraction all over the city, but also particularly on Columbus Avenue,
which had been such an eyesore. So, we benefited, everybody did. It faded away when
neighborhood groups saw that it was gentrifying neighborhoods, which basically had been worse
than slums in terms of retail activities. No one wanted to be there. Columbus Avenue was
reimagined, in fact, gentrified. So, the movement to eliminate J-51. I forget how many years later
that was. By that time, I had completed half a dozen or so, maybe more, renovations ending with

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The Endicott, a whole blockfront, which is another story [chuckles], and other developers had
hopped on. And other parts of the city where there was J-51—where there were J-51 benefits—
also were being phased out because they were too successful [chuckles]. The program wasn’t to
benefit successful areas. It stills exists I think in parts of Harlem or above 110th Street, but I’m
not sure where it is as of this date.
[00:07:30] So that was what incentivized me, having done the analysis and finding that there was
available financing from certain savings banks—just savings banks, they knew New York. There
was one savings bank which made all these loans and they were very successful and so were the
projects and I can’t remember the name of it at this point. I think it was East Side Savings.
So that was the J-51 program, and it phased out and it was replaced by something else, which
didn’t have the same benefits. But, I mean, I guess nowadays what you’d have in its place would
be zoning increments based on adding middle- or low-income housing to a project, tax relief
from the portion of the building that had low-income units. There were other ways too that the
City thought of, but in those days, these were slums and it wasn’t like you could encourage
someone to build a forty-story building anywhere there, and anyway the zoning never permitted
it—still doesn’t. There’s a six FAR [floor area ratio], which means you basically can go six
stories high. So that’s the J-51 program story, which was phased out.
And I had a lawyer, Irving, my favorite person then and even now that he’s in heaven, Irving
knew the J-51 rules backwards and forwards and that was a specialty of his firm: filing for J-51.
Vural: And do you think that you would have been able to buy and renovate buildings on
Columbus had it not been for J-51?

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Quinlan: Absolutely not. No one would lend. The only incentive to lend was that you didn’t
have a lien of city taxes for a period of years. Under certain circumstances, it went up to fifteen.
And even with the low projected rents—which had to be low even though they were a block
away from Central Park West—the rents that you could get on Columbus Avenue were uncertain
at the beginning, and you were speculating that you could even get them because nobody decent
would live on those avenue blocks between, let’s say, Seventy-second and Eighty-second Streets
and beyond, the rents didn’t justify—wouldn’t attract a mortgage lender where the first lien was
not its lien, but was the city tax lien. So a window opened for a time when J-51 was in effect.
Vural: So, I know, as you’ve mentioned, you bought and renovated several buildings, one
including 100 West Seventy-second Street.
Quinlan: Yes, yes.
Vural: The southwest corner of Columbus and Seventy-second.
Quinlan: Yes.
Vural: So, I’m interested in that partly because it’s such a beautiful building but also because
from what I read, the retail was really important. Do you remember the process of buying and
renovating that building and how you rented out spaces?
Quinlan: Yes, I think it was one of the later ones after having done several others. There was a
New York family that owned a whole lot of properties, from the time when their grandparents or
great-grandparents bought them when they were in good shape and in good areas, and now they
weren’t in good shape and they were on Columbus or off on the side streets. Some of the other
renovators purchased from this family. But I had a personal friendship with one of the members,

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distinguished, very sort of old-school, striped tie type of guy who was probably in his sixties
when I knew him. And they had this real estate company, Ruland & Benjamin, it was called, and
this guy I knew was Hoffman Benjamin. And he said, “Well, we have property—”—found out
he had properties on Columbus. So, I started buying from them. The building you’re asking
about was another one of their properties.
At that time, George Beane—who is one of the people you’re talking with and is very, has a
great memory of what went on [chuckles] on Columbus Avenue and a great sense of humor, had
left his law firm—I had met him in The Dakota, which was sort of a hotbed of young people,
including Sheila Lukins of The Silver Palate, who was my next, our next door neighbor on the
same floor, third floor.
And so I met George. He was single and had one of the studio apartments, enormous, beautiful
apartment, and he knew what I was doing because he’d renovated his own apartment. And there
came a point when I was able to get rid of—and I think that’s a perfectly good description—of
the managing agent and agents that I had been using who let’s say they were not the most ethical
people. I didn’t want to be associated with them. I also didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t getting
full reporting.
So, I wanted to form my own management company, and George was not only willing, but
highly qualified. I think he can tell you, he might have thought that the practice of law in this
very old-school firm was boring. The changes taking place on Columbus Avenue were not
boring, because there were renovations and forward movement as it transitioned.

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So, he had spoken to, I guess one of the people at Ruland & Benjamin, and this building was
available. And it was right across the street from one I had renovated. And he became a partner
in it—and still is—and so we’re partners.
And that is that building [note, the question was about 100 West Seventy-second Street, but this
discussion is about 100 West Seventy-third Street]. It did not need a lot of renovation upstairs. It
was not a gut job. It was fixing up apartments one by one and also clearing out illegal tenants if
they were illegal. I don’t remember if rent-control laws were in effect at that time, but as I had
mentioned earlier, they were not a hindrance because you could always find much nicer
apartments to move a tenant into from a building that is so bad you’re gutting it out and
rebuilding it.
So, not a gut job but there was a lot of renovation. And the stores, always a great source of
income because apartment rents on Columbus were limited and the stores, the retail income was
always pretty good. It became good once the publicity and everybody all of a sudden was
looking at Columbus Avenue. So, income source from the stores was very important and is
today.
I think we have thirty-five stores on Columbus Avenue still [chuckles] among eighty-five that we
have ownership interests in.
Vural: Wow.
Quinlan: But Columbus Avenue contained a cluster that started my career.

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Vural: I read that you had a sort of particular orientation to who you would rent to, and the
examples I read were about the two spaces in that building on West Seventy-second. I guess
early tenants were—
Quinlan: Seventy-third.
Vural: Um—
Quinlan: Well, there was something on West Seventy-second but I think you asked me about
one on a block north, Seventy-third, the southwest corner. I’m not sure.
Vural: Well, I was thinking of To Boot and Natural Source, which I thought were at Seventysecond and—
Quinlan: Oh, it is, but I thought you were asking me about another building and I probably gave
you all the wrong information. I thought you were speaking about the one on Seventy-third
Street that George Beane is a partner at.
Vural: I see. Okay, okay.
Quinlan: So, whatever I said was about that building, not about the one that you’re now—
[chuckles] that was another building. I want to set the record straight that I was talking about 100
West Seventy-third Street—
Vural: Okay.
Quinlan: [00:16:35] —and the fact it did not need much renovation. Which the building you
were apparently referring to—excuse me, I glitched that—needed everything, a full gut job
[chuckles]. I mean, it had been an office building and was basically empty.

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Vural: Okay, so just to be clear, so you were describing 100 West Seventy-third, which is a
building you still own—
Quinlan: Which I thought you were asking me about. And Ruland Benjamin, the firm that
owned all—did not have anything to do with 100 West Seventy-second, which is the southwest
corner of Seventy-second and Columbus, a rather large building with a hundred feet of frontage
on Columbus and fifty feet of frontage on West Seventy-second, southwest corner.
Vural: Yes.
Quinlan: Is that what you’re asking me about?
Vural: It was, but let’s stick with Seventy-third then and then we’ll go back to Seventy-second.
Quinlan: Okay [chuckles].
Vural: So, [100 West] Seventy-third you bought with George, who for some time worked for
you as—
Quinlan: Well, up until that, yes, because he left the firm he was with. And I had—I was saying
I had outside management. That’s why I might have confused the issue if you were speaking
about Seventy-second Street. That was after.
Vural: Okay.
Quinlan: The outside management, I didn’t like. George wanted to leave the law and I had
enough income generated to pay a management fee, which I had been paying to outside people,
and I said to George at that time—it was before Seventy-third Street, I think, because, yes, he
was involved in other things as a manager, not an owning partner, “Look, I’ve got $25,000.

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That’s all I get as a management fee. But I think I’d like to have someone run it for us, for
myself, my family, not these other creeps [chuckles].” Sorry! Those are—probably anything I
say will be libelous—or not libelous, the other one. So, he said, “Yes, I’d like to do that.” And he
was good, he was terrific, and is—I mean what he does—in what he does today. So, that’s when
we had our own in-house management. And we called it Walker Malloy.
My theory was that if you put your own name on the management company, you don’t want
someone to call you at midnight at home. So, we each put the names of our great-grandfathers.
Walker was a great-grandfather of George Beane. And Malloy—from Canada, my own, Canada,
was called Fortune Malloy, I love the name—was a great-grandfather of mine, if not another
“great.” So, we were Walker Malloy, and we still are here, and George is now A.R. Walker,
because he branched out on his own.
Quinlan: When people call me and demand to speak to Mr. Malloy—“I know him well and I
know he’ll speak to me and I have this and that”—I know that they don’t know Fortune Malloy.
I didn’t know him either.
So, that company that was formed then. And we renovated that—well, to the extent that building
needed renovation. It wasn’t a gut job.
Vural: On Seventy-third Street.
Quinlan: Yes.
Vural: Right.
Quinlan: I’m sorry—
Vural: No, that’s fine.

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Quinlan: —I’m going back and forth.
Vural: I saw a photo that—I think when you bought it, it had a dry cleaner in the corner.
Quinlan: Yes, I think it did. Yes, it did. It had a number of tenants. It was not that far from
Seventy-second Street to be in the no-man’s-land of the mid Seventies, which had been sort of
cleaned up already, yes.
Vural: And it’s still a rental building that the two of you own together?
Quinlan: Yes. Well, his firm runs it, but we own it together with my wife, but anyway. The
stores I remember was always—we wanted to get good stores and I don’t think they were always
good stores. I don’t remember who was there except I think there was that dry cleaner. They
used to do their dry cleaning on the premises until the law prohibited that for good reasons. So,
maybe he moved out because he could do his dry cleaning there.
The only tenant I remember being involved with was the same one that George Beane
remembered, Sheila Lukins of The Silver Palate. And do you want me to speak about the famous
Silver Palate and so on? I’ll try and do it briefly, but it’s such a wonderful memory of mine.
Sheila and Richard Lukins were our next-door neighbors, literally, in The Dakota. Sheila was a
great cook and she had a partner called Julee Rosso.
[INTERRUPTION]
Vural: Okay, so Sheila Lukins was your neighbor and a fabulous cook.
Quinlan: Yes, and her husband was a theatrical producer and successful and Sheila wanted
something to do, have a career. And they had two daughters at that point, one of whom has

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grown up and is a close friend of my son, Tim, who runs the company. Just by coincidence,
totally, they met without knowing that the parents knew each other.
So, Sheila said to me as a neighbor—and she knew I had been for a long time with Landauer
Associates as a real estate consultant and was renovating on Columbus—she said, “I’d like to
have a meeting with you in your apartment.” Sort of formal. And her voice may have been
trembling or maybe I’m imagining it, but there was an excitement in her voice. “And I’d like to
bring Julee Rosso, also.”
So, we sat down in our apartment next door and they said, “We’d like to start a food store—a
food operation, prepared food—on Madison Avenue. And we have a location or we know where
we want to be and it’s really going to be very high end.” Didn’t say it in that language but very,
very—everything organic and pure. And, of course, Sheila was a fantastic cook. I think they
were going to have their products canned in jars or what have you. And they had their logo—
Sheila’s basically an artist. She was a designer of the best-selling cookbook that followed and of
the typography, the big print, which probably is the reason it sold so many copies as much as the
fact it was a major success for its simple menus.
And I said, “Where on Madison?” And she said, “Well”—she told me, it was like in the
Seventies, very high-end place. And she said, “But we can’t have a kitchen there so we’ll be
cooking here in The Dakota. I’ll be cooking and we’ll bring it over.” I said, “Well, Columbus
Avenue’s a block away and there’s a building on Seventy-third Street right down the street from
you. You could have the food there—you could bring the food there much easier and the rent
will be a lot less.”

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So, they went to Columbus, they went to our building, where their storefront was photographed
and became the eponymous—I like to use that word once in a while—Silver Palate Cookbook
cover, which sold millions of copies. It was a little store on Columbus Avenue. It was early on,
too. It was not at the beginning of the sequence of developing, or renovating, but that location
was relatively safe—because it was Seventy-second Street—from the point of very high-end
gourmet food. We work together on store leasing there still today because we both have retail
experience and know where to find the right tenants for the right spaces.
Vural: So, tell me a little bit more about The Silver Palate. Do you remember what it looked like
in its early days and what did it sell?
Quinlan: Well, just like the cover of the book. That was the storefront. Literally, they took the
photograph. And it had several editions and we have them. And they also had other offshoots
besides the food, these preserve things they did. They did those preserve foods not in her kitchen,
but in Queens, a factory which did that for a lot of labels for other food companies.
So that’s what it looked like [chuckles]. It was cute and looked even better on the cover. But
that’s a Columbus Avenue cover, the picture.
Vural: And do you remember what you thought at the time? How did you feel about the store
opening?
Quinlan: Oh, I thought it would be a huge success. I think the rent was $400 a month. I mean,
you couldn’t rent an apartment for that at that time [chuckles].
So, no, and it was a beautiful front. And they did business instantly. Little did she and Julee
dream that there was such a large market, well, everywhere in the city, but also there. Two nice-

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looking young girls—I can’t say girls—young ladies (persons?), and very witty. So it all helped,
you know. And they hired people who just wanted to work there, work for them.
Vural: And do you remember seeing it as a sort of indicator of the success of what was
happening on Columbus?
Quinlan: Not really. I saw that happening already in the block north, just across the street. That
was where Ruskay’s was. I believe I mentioned that. Early pioneer, when it was all dark at night
and the storefronts were all shuttered in steel with graffiti on them. No, that had gone, that phase
was over, pretty much. And it certainly attracted higher-end type tenants when it saw how—but
mostly in the dry goods, as it turned out, businesses were thriving. But we then had The Muffin
Shop and others now that have prevailed all those years. I don’t remember why The Silver Palate
closed. They were doing such huge business with the book and the preserved products, obviously
they couldn’t cook in Sheila’s kitchen that much longer [chuckles]. No one at The Dakota said a
word to anybody about it, I mean if they even knew. I knew that at the start the food was being
brought over [chuckles] by Sheila and Julee themselves in these big boxes a block away to the
store.
No, it was a brave new world of young people coming in. In a way they were typical of those
homesteaders who had already discovered the side streets and the SROs that could be vacated.
For $15- to $20,000, you could buy a twenty-foot brownstone instead of having to move to
Scarsdale. That was a phase that even preceded the—I think I mentioned this—even preceded
the revitalization of Columbus Avenue. These young couples were already moving into the
neighborhood.

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Vural: So, tell me about West Seventy-second, which is the building that Huntley [Gill] lives in,
on the southern corner.
Quinlan: Yes, that’s one of my favorite buildings, I have to say. It was built as the headquarters
of a grocery chain, Park & Tilford, years before the A & P chain. And it was solid. It was
designed by McKim, Mead & White. We were lucky, we thought, because in renovating a
building you like to have access to the architectural plans, and McKim, Mead & White’s
architectural plans were part of the historical archives at the New-York Historical Society.
So, I forgot who went over there, we had access to a set of plans, the McKim, Mead & White
drawings and specs. They turned out to be different from what was built. The exterior was
inviolable, though not landmarked, and the inside all had very high ceilings, but it had been
designed as office space above the ground floor. Park & Tilford was the first grocery chain in
America. And they had a catalog, which I have, of everything they sold, and it was a very fat
catalogue. It also sold dry good and fitted the department-store model.
The upstairs had very high ceilings because they didn’t have AC in 1882. I think that was the
date. We gutted it down to its concrete floors. Solidly built. The result is very high-ceilinged
apartments, though not large. Studios, which there was a market for, and one bedrooms, not these
enormous flats that you have being built today. But it was the market at the location.
And the ground floor—oh, the ground floor had the retail that was not that hard to rent because it
was Seventy-second Street, and below Seventy-second on Columbus was pretty decent.
There were two basements: a basement and a subbasement. In the subbasement, which was full
of junk, there was a cold stream running through it from Central Park. There are many streams
coming out of Central Park, you don’t always see them. There was a trench along the inner

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periphery of the building, which still had spring water running through it. We learned from a
very old gentleman, whose mind was sharp, who remembered going to Park & Tilford as a kid
for ice cream. And this was a building built in 1882 and this had to be around 1980. He was in
his mid-nineties. He said, “We used to go there for ice cream.” I said, “Ice cream?” He said,
“Yes, they made it in the cellar because they used the cold water from the springs from Central
Park and rock salt.” And he said, “I remember that. It was the only place in New York where you
could get ice cream from a store.” Guinness should know that.
So, having bought the building—and I forgot the circumstances of buying it—I of course went
down to the subcellar. It was dank, and I saw the stream running just inside its walls. And right
above it was another cellar, which had a nightclub that had been there since 1966. It was an
Israeli nightclub and was very popular among newly arrived Israelis, and it was grandfathered
under zoning, because you could not have a nightclub any longer anywhere in that area. But they
could stay.
So, the cellar—below the ground floor and above the subcellar—was a successful nightclub and
then it just sort of petered out, as things do. And one night club after another came in as our
rental tenant, and each got worse, until there was a shooting out in front and the operator of the
night club, who was handing out pamphlets in the rougher boroughs of New York City inviting
for one night raves, was kicked out, with the assistance of the Twentieth Precinct and
neighborhood groups.
And so with the shootings and street mayhem, it was terrible. I mean, not just for our
neighborhood, we cared and still do care a lot about, but it wasn’t a use that should continue
being there. So, we gave up on that use, maybe a year or so after we bought the building. It was

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grandfathered for a cabaret license, which even allowed retail. So, we changed the use and it’s
quite successful now as a spa and gym and physical therapy center and so on.
Vural: And on the street level, if I’m correct, the first tenants that you rented to were a boot, a
Texas cowboy boot shop called To Boot.
Quinlan: Yes, I forgot about that. I didn’t know it was cowboy—I forgot. But, yes, that was
successful, but that’s all I remember about it. You probably are also thinking of the other one
that was on the corner, Natural Source, which had kind of a meteoric [chuckles] rise and splash
in the whole city because it was the first one to reintroduce muffins. Believe it or not, until that
time—people ate donuts in the morning with their coffee—that there was a time when no one,
when muffins were things kept in cupboards and what have you. Natural Source brought them
back. They were a famous tenant from that point of view. They were selling twelve thousand
muffins a day—well, not selling in the store—delivering them to Zabar’s, Fairway,
Bloomingdale’s, etcetera. They had a huge list of retail outlets.
Vural: Tell me—because what I read about both of those was in conjunction with you and the
way that you were thinking about retail and wanting to have retail both reflect change in the
neighborhood, but also make change in the neighborhood.
Quinlan: That’s true.
Vural: Can you tell me about that?
Quinlan: Well, you know, we didn’t have a huge choice. At the beginning, retailers weren’t
flocking to Columbus Avenue so often we had to go out and find our own tenant, give them a

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break in the rent and so on. I’d see a use in another part of the city similar to our demographic
and go after that type of tenant.
Later, there was a big buzz on Columbus, all over New York Magazine—and that’s some of the
printed stuff [pointing to magazines and news clippings on the table], which I pulled out of a file
drawer.
Vural: Like the articles.
Quinlan: Articles. So, you know, it already had passed out of the period when high-end type
tenants wouldn’t want to be because it certainly wasn’t Madison Avenue. Of course, it was a lot
cheaper, but it wasn’t swish or fancy. It was like pioneer country, a place to test innovative ideas.
Coca Cola Clothes was a failed experiment. Everything they sold had Coca Cola written or
illustrated on it. Duh.
So, they came. I’m not sure I made that much of an effort. As the destination heated up, we could
pick and choose, too. And we kept aware of neighborhood needs. We had several shoe repair
stores in close proximity. One was Drago Shoe Repair at 100 West Seventy-second Street and
they’d been there for decades. Drago was a chain. As it happened, two blocks south Shoe Box on
Seventieth Street, a building I had renovated also and owned, also had a shoe repair shop.
Drago was really seedy. They hadn’t changed anything in like twenty-five, thirty years, so they
went out. And the reason I’m thinking of them [chuckles] is that we had a friend from Millbrook,
New York, who happened to also live on Seventieth Street. She accosted me on Columbus one
day, although I never knew she had a place in New York on Seventieth Street. She said, “I have a
bone to pick with you, Mr. Robert C. Quinlan.” I said, “What?” “You did away with my
favorite—you kicked out my favorite shoe repair store on Seventy-second Street, Drago.” I said,

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“Yes, we’re renovating the building and we needed to clear out the ground floor, too.” But we
did clean it up and make nice retail spaces with new storefronts and conforming signage. I said,
“Yes,”—I won’t mention her name [chuckles] because I see her a lot—I said, “Yes, but there is
one right here on Columbus and Seventieth Street.” And she said, “Oh, but I don’t like them.”
That’s one story of people who accuse developers of gentrifying a neighborhood.
Another—and if I may diverge, and you can cut this stuff out if you want—on Park Avenue—it
was famous, it got in the newspaper—a store tenant’s lease that was not renewed, was on Park
Avenue. It was a Belgian chocolatier. The space was turned into a pharmacy. And a neighbor
complained vociferously in a public way, and also at the community board complained, that
developers were kicking tenants out—the landlord was kicking tenants out and ruining the
neighborhood because she was losing her favorite chocolatier.
Intentionally we’ve kept—we, I and other owners—have kept services that are required. Shoe
repair, still there on Seventy-sixth and Columbus. A locksmith. I mean, sorry, it’s not the shoe
repair, we have a shoe repair on Columbus between Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth Streets.
It’s very successful because they do more than resole shoes. They repair belts and pocketbooks
and leather cases. They learned that there was a market for something else besides putting soles
and heels on shoes. That was kind of dying out, people don’t keep shoes. You just bought them,
threw them away, and bought new ones. Leather repair is thriving. Locksmith’s thriving.
Amazon doesn’t offer either service.
So, the little services, the barbers, the hairdressers who service mostly people from the
neighborhood, I would have to say a lot of customers come from the Central Park West high
rises a block away, they came back. So, I feel it’s still a neighborhood. You know, we don’t

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really make an effort to rent space below market value, but these local services are making a lot
of money and actually gross more per square foot than larger tenants, but that’s their business.
So, it’s a mix. It’s a mix on Columbus at this time.
Vural: What happened with that building, with 100 West Seventy-second Street? Did you turn
that into co-ops or condos or rentals?
Quinlan: It was a rental to begin with under J-51 and then we sold the upstairs apartments. We
turned the upper floors, which was something I had no problem ever doing, into co-ops because
apartments were smaller and thus cheaper. It was a separate corporation from the ground floor,
the retail, and the two floors below it. But there’s still a couple of rent-stabilized tenants in there
and Huntley [Gill] is one. But it’s now a co-op, and there are those who have statutory rights to
be there—because the J-51 law did change after we were finished 100 West Seventy-second
Street, declaring that if you were there and the tax abatement ran out, you could stay. It wasn’t
any longer rent controlled, because that was over, but it was rent stabilized. Very little difference
in effect, just another name.
We still have two or three rent-stabilized tenants there. We pay the co-op maintenance and
receive the rent-stabilized rents. They receive the same services and then when one comes up for
sale, through normal attrition, it is sold. There are a couple left out of thirty-five apartments.
Vural: So, but mostly your model on Columbus Avenue was at some point to sell the residential
parts?
Quinlan: Not really. No, not really. It wasn’t a model. It just would happen. For one thing, I
could use the capital that came from a sale to expand and that was an important reason. But, you
know, we still have rentals. 326 Columbus, the very first renovation I did with the three

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tenements put together, very successful rental, a prototype for today’s model for small micro
housing. We didn’t mean to do it as a prototype. We did it because that was what we had to do
there in response to the market. Never vacant. It’s a very nice rental income, and the stores
always have been a third to a half of the rental income from any of these buildings. So, one
would want to focus on stores. Co-oping the upstairs apartments is a possibility, but there are tax
reasons now why we don’t do that. We own three larger rental buildings built from the ground up
in Brooklyn. They will not become condos.
Vural: So, I want to ask you what—we talked about George Beane, who was first a neighbor
and then an employee and then a partner and now he’s his own—
Quinlan: Yes.
Vural: —property owner. What about your relationship with others who were kind of part of the
wave of redeveloping Columbus Avenue?
Quinlan: There on Columbus Avenue? Well, I mean, citywide it’s a whole other story.
Vural: But in this area, what was your relationship sort of in those years? Did you see—
Quinlan: We were all cordial. I mean, the Bruscos, I knew, and the gentleman who you’ve
recorded, Nic [Nicola Brusco], is a nice guy. He had his business. And then there was the
plumbing Bruscos, and they’d been renovating buildings on the side streets. And, you know, Joe
[Joseph Brusco] is president of the BID [Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District]
now, which I guess I can take credit for having founded, although it was many years ago, with
assistance, too, from Huntley Gill. I think at that time he may have been managing Walker,
Malloy. It would have been after George Beane had gone on his own, although we’re close

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friends and see each other [chuckles] and co-own this one building together. George became an
Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway person at a good time.
Yes, I didn’t know that many. There was another fellow—he was well-known, his father was in
the business, his mother ran it—mostly owning properties on Seventy-second Street, Sackman,
Alan Sackman. And they had Sackman Mortgage Brokers, but also owned a lot of real estate.
Alan renovated buildings on Seventy-second, not so much, if anything, on Columbus Avenue.
He became a big game hunter literally [chuckles] and was off all over the world. But I think he
lives in Idaho. The Sackmans were good renovators. I won’t comment on Alan’s retirement
hobby.
You know, you were interested in the renovations taking place around one’s own, that they be
quality renovations. And I’d say for the most part they all were, within the limits of the rents you
could get. And now, you know, it comes around, you’ve got to replace windows and you do what
you have to do if you own them as rentals. And they’re free market. Being free market has been
very important in the upgrading systems and facades. They reach a level where the market is and
then you look for annual increases that cover real inflation, like two or three percent a year. And
that’s fine until the city real estate taxes—I’ll get my licks in now—raise and rise and rise and
rise, because that’s the easiest way to obtain money for the city. Seventy percent of the city’s
annual budget. There’s a point where it’s uneconomic to build rentals because you can’t go
beyond market rent. Market rent is market rent, but city appraisers see what the rent is and they
basically will take sometimes up to thirty percent of the rent roll because you have to supply that
information—your rental income. The budget office doesn’t care about the repair costs or the
maintenance costs or anything else. They’ll just take a percentage of the rent. They used to deny
they did that but that’s how they come up with your real estate assessment.

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So, it’s not always productive to maintain residential rental properties, to own those as rentals,
particularly if they’re under some kind of rent control. But we are basically focused on retail,
citywide as well as on Columbus Avenue. We monetize some of the investment to develop
elsewhere in the city by selling apartments after renovations and keeping the retail.
Vural: So, I want to ask you to return to The Endicott for a minute, because we talked about it
the other day and I know it was the last project on Columbus, but it also has some important
retail that I’ve read and heard about. So, I want to—and I also read that you talked about it as
before the renovation being kind of the north wall on—
Quinlan: Yes, it was—yes, people didn’t go above Eighty-first Street on Columbus. You know
how the Museum of Natural History ends on the south side of Eighty-first Street? Well, there are
a number of lovely buildings on Eighty-first Street and Central Park West running over to
Columbus. And so anybody coming from the park end would go along the north side of the
historical—of the history museum [American Museum of Natural History] and then go left on
Columbus. I mean there was a little—it was okay right there, but they wouldn’t go right. They
wouldn’t. It was horrible. Worst block in the city.
Vural: When you renovated The Endicott, I know some of the—one of the earliest stores was
DDL [Foodshow], the DDL store.
Quinlan: Oh, yes [chuckles]. Yes, that was an experience working with Dino De Laurentiis, yes.
Vural: Can you tell me about that?
Quinlan: Yes well, The Endicott blockfront had retail—I mean now has retail. The
configuration of the stores are usually quite ideal. Like they’re fifty feet deep or so on and often

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have downstairs that can be used. The center entrance in the middle of the block was closed, was
all sealed up when it was an SRO. People only could go in or out one way. And basically Gladys
and Alfonso [Turnipseed] guarded that entry: who came in, who went out. I mentioned that
colorful, brilliant couple who specialized in running these kind of—supervising these SRO
buildings.
So, the center entrance was sealed up. But it was a beautiful entrance, and it leads to the palm
court of the original hotel. The Plaza Hotel has a palm court. So, the Endicott had a palm court
not that dissimilar from the model of The Plaza Hotel, but more modest. This is an 1880s
building in an area that was—it was there because of the Museum of Natural History being there.
The palm court went 135 feet deep to the back of the building, not an ideal retail layout. It was a
huge space with a skylight—and still is. How do you rent that? I mean, it’s huge. It was like
12,000—no, around eight or 10,000 square feet, one big skylighted room with some little spaces
to the sides.
So, the first tenant was a restaurant and it was run by two people. One was a lawyer. His practice
was getting restaurant’s liquor licenses from the state liquor authority. He was a very clean cut,
educated young guy. And the other was a restaurant operator. I think he was. I’m trying to
remember, because we had two before Dino—one or two before Dino came in.
Unfortunately, there was a drug and alcohol problem that he picked up while in business there,
and it was tragic because they spent everything they had to fix up their space. I have a
photograph of the original palm court taken the day after it was finished in 1880 or so. But by the
1970s, it was a wreck. We spent a lot of money restoring it. The tenants did too, created kitchens

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here and there and they used the basement. And they went out of business for the simple reason I
mentioned.
So, I’m not sure, I think after that someone took it over “as is” and it then included a large space
on the side street, Eighty-second Street, which they merged together, and it was quite
successful—huge—and then it wasn’t successful when the entrepreneur died of a heart attack.
Dino de Laurentiis offices were at Columbus Circle. It was then the Gulf and Western building.
He had a whole floor. I remember my meetings with him there. He wanted to rent the palm court
at the Endicott and he did rent it. He was going to transform the space and he did—into the style
of the very high-end French markets like Fauchon that were popular in Europe. Dino viewed
Zabar’s as an outdated rival to his elegant enclosed food palace. He would add a theatrical touch,
too.
He was going to out Zabar’s Zabar’s. That was his challenge. It was like a big movie. So, he
spent $7 million, which as I realized later was the budget for one of his movies. It was a huge
amount at the time for a food hall. And he created a theater atmosphere in the space called DDL
Foodshow. People want that when they buy food, he said, but it was a bad idea, wrong concept.
Every time you stopped at a little food counter in the court to buy what was being sold—let’s say
it was fruit—you received a ticket with the price. So, you’d end up with about five tickets from
five food centers. And then you had to wait in a line at a cash register and each ticket was
laboriously entered into your bill. It was just so stupid, but Dino had this bee in his bonnet.
Zabar’s was New York.
But he was there for several years and he got a lot of publicity—Dino de Laurentiis’s
Foodshow—and a lot of bad, a lot of criticism because it didn’t fit the New York style and how

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you just want to get in and out of these places and you want produce piled up, you don’t need to
have it so tastefully arranged in pyramids. Customers didn’t want to interrupt his displays. I
remember that. Everything was panoramic—if you took an orange, those around it would
collapse. That’s why each station had an attendant.
Fairway and Zabar’s are the New York style, and he didn’t win his battle to overthrow it with
this much higher end and beautifully displayed products. Dean and Deluca comes closer to that
model today.
I remember when he finished his construction and was about to open, he summoned me to his
offices. A little guy, he had two tall Sicilians in the office, on each side of his desk, all dressed in
black, standing there. And he said, “I have an idea, Bobbb.” Bobbb [emphasizes the b at the
end]—I remember that. He says, “I love it.” And basically what he said was where the entrance
canopy came out over the sidewalk, he wanted to install King Kong’s hand. “I own King Kong’s
hand from my movie King Kong.” And he said, “It is fifteen feet. And I want to put it over the
entry on top of the awning”—which he would build—“as a greeting and we’ll have all kinds of
lights on opening night, and shows.” And it would stay there for a while. I said, “How long
would it stay there?” He said, “No, no, no, it would bring people there.” And I couldn’t resist
saying, “You know, if I saw going into a food store, the hand of King Kong, I’d suddenly start
picking hair out of my teeth.” And he turned to his assistants, he’s like, “Che stronzo che che
forte,” which I happened to know the meaning of after two years in the Army in Italy and not
only knew Italian, because I studied it while I was there, but knew the slang. I can translate it, I
guess—
Vural: Please do.

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Quinlan: —sort of roughly, because he was referring to me. He said, “What a hard turd, that
one,” i.e. a blockhead [chuckles].
So, I said something back in Italian street slang. At last, I had put Dino de Laurentiis on his
defensive. He slumped into his chair.
The Foodshow was badly conceived from day one. He walked away.
His daughter was a food person and he was doing this for her I believe. So, you make a movie, it
doesn’t work, you walk away. Often other people’s money. He always financed his Spaghetti
Westerns in Europe and they were very successful over there and never successful here. So, I
think he had the same idea. And his daughter now has a food show on TV, and I guess it was for
her he had a food store on his radar because otherwise he would be making movies—you know,
why would he be doing this?
So, that was the theatrical experiment played out in the beautiful palm court of the Endicott
Hotel. Now the restaurant there is very successful. Ten years ago it was rented to a twenty-two
year old guy for a restaurant. He was a graduate student from Mexico City. His father financed it
and that’s who is now the owner, I believe—he may have brought in partners.
Although the new young tenant did everything wrong in terms of building department filings,
like not filing [chuckles], and it took him almost two years to open because of bad advice. He
had a consultant who said, “I know everything there is to know about building.” Beware when
someone says that.
So, the Palm Court was revisualized, opened first as Calle Ocho, Mexican, and it was good. The
young tenant had hired a great-name chef who quit before he opened because of, I guess delays

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and so on. So, he now has another chef and he’s very successful. There’s a big bar in front. I
don’t know if you’ve been there.
Vural: I haven’t but I certainly know it.
Quinlan: Yes, but that’s the history and so far, he’s there to stay and he’s doing well. It’s called
The Milling Room. I think we gave them a longer rent-free period than the lease required—you
give free rent while a person fixes up a place. This was quite a fix up, but he had other ideas and
made changes. So, after his free period was up and he wasn’t even into the construction, we gave
him more free month on top of the initial free rent period. That’s the story of the palm court at
The Endicott and I will show you the photo of it in the 1880s, and you can take a picture of it.
Vural: Thank you.
Quinlan: It was quite extraordinary looking, beautiful—then.
Vural: Also one of the first uses of one of the commercial spaces was your wife had Endicott
Booksellers.
Quinlan: Absolutely.
Vural: Can you tell me about that?
Quinlan: Well, yes. My wife is a booklover and, well, she knew Sheila Lukins and that success
story, and we were neighbors for seven years while we still lived in The Dakota. And—
[INTERRUPTION]
So, we had space for rent in the Endicott. The West Side is a bookish place, where people read
and she opened a successful bookstore there called Endicott Booksellers, a very large space near

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the entrance to the palm court. Never making much money, because independent bookstores tend
to make about a six percent profit, you know, unlike the initial expectations of most retailers
[chuckles]. But people who own bookstores love books. My wife does. And so did the
neighborhood—and it was great for Encarnita because it became a mecca for authors to read.
And authors always would ask to read at Endicott Booksellers first, even though the layout had a
lot of nooks and crannies, because that’s the bookstore feeling, divided into children’s books,
you know, this other kind of book or that book, that type of title. And for publishers, its citywide
reputation was eminent. They always asked for it to introduce new titles.
Jeannette Watson, who we know, had Shakespeare & Company on Madison Avenue. So, it was
an interesting competition, but not really because they were in two different markets. People
didn’t go from the West Side to Madison to buy books or come from Madison through the park
to Columbus Avenue to buy—it was the Upper West Side, where a critical mass of readers were
matched by what seemed to be a matching number of shop lifters.
Our young son used to go there and sit and read for hours. But, as I was telling you, the six
percent profit was basically wiped out each year by shoplifting. That’s part of the history of
independent bookstores. They have about a six percent shoplifting history. People came in
wearing big coats. And then they’d sell them to street vendors—the tragedy of independent
bookstores and the sadness of Endicott Booksellers. It closed after fourteen years due more to the
arrival of Barnes & Noble on Broadway and Eighty-second. People would go to B&N and buy a
book for thirty percent less on a promotion, lower than Endicott’s prices.
But what was beginning to bother my wife and her dedicated employees, many of whom were
Columbia [University] students, young people who also loved books. Nobody was hired who

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didn’t love books and loved to read. She’d interviewed people who said, “Well, I hate to read but
I need a job,” so that interview didn’t last very long [chuckles].
So, Encarnita had a great staff. But sad, and it really was, I won’t say broke their hearts, because
the employees were quite a close-knit group, including Susan Berkholz, who was the onsite
manager and a dedicated book person. Her husband owned or ran a small publishing company.
So, when long-term customers came from Barnes & Noble to return books they just bought there
for credit at Endicott Booksellers, it demoralized everyone. Books at Barnes & Noble could be
thirty percent less and a buyer could get credit for one hundred percent at Endicott, where they
bought the book they wanted. Yes, I see you showing some expression [chuckles], which I
understand because it’s sort of heartbreaking.
So, basically, the store was losing money, and not only that, having these sad experiences of
people returning books not bought there for credit, and also sad experiences like someone would
come in with a long coat with multiple inside pockets and fill them up with books, only to sell
them at Strand Booksellers on Broadway.
Stuart Bernstein was one of the lovers of books and who worked with Susan in running the
store—Encarnita was there every day, but she wasn’t managing Endicott. He followed somebody
to The Strand Bookstore on Broadway, which was selling stolen Endicott books. Stuart was
kicked out of the store. But, you know, you could take several hundred dollars’ worth of books
out, if you have a big enough coat. That’s why Endicott only broke even year after year.
Those things and then Barnes & Noble’s arrival, which was the nail on the coffin. Irony is today
what’s happened to Barnes & Noble—out of business, basically, Amazon. Further irony,
Amazon is opening retail outlets.

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So, independent bookstores are scarce, but when they exist—and we have at least one bookstore
tenant in one of our other buildings.
Vural: Well, then you have Book Culture in The Endicott Building now, don’t you?
Quinlan: Yes, thank you. Chris is a very nice guy, he also ran the bookstore up near Columbia
University, which thrived because he carried the textbooks for the students who had to buy them
for their classes. And yes, he’s a good as well as brave and stubborn guy. Chris is on the BID
board and is very helpful. But in order to make money and pay the rent, about fifty percent of his
sales are gift items, the other fifty percent are books. It’s what you have to do to survive. That’s
the new bookstore model. And they’re good quality items, a wall clock there you can buy
elsewhere for less, but people buy them at Book Culture because they’re in the bookstore and
they love bookstores. They bring their kids. He sells coffee now, which you need to do, because
they’re a real profit center.
So, Book Culture has good titles and it’s a good example of today’s independent bookstore. I
don’t know if you go there.
Vural: I do. I’m a good customer.
Quinlan: Oh, you are?
Vural: [Laughs]
Quinlan: Yes, he’s—I don’t know if you see Chris. But Encarnita was very funny when he
opened. I’ll probably get in trouble later when she reads this. She said, “I can never go back in
that space. I just can’t.” And I thought I really hadn’t realized how emotionally attached she was

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to it or I would not have said, “Oh, I think it’s time.” I’m sorry I did that, but it was time because
losses were building up and fourteen years was a good run.
So, now Chris is there serving the neighborhood and, you know, it changed a little bit, but the
layout and the titles are similar. When Encarnita said, “I cannot go back in that store.” Her selfimage was of a character in one of these children’s books—he had scissor hands and had scissors
on his feet and every time he walked, it was like being stabbed by scissors. She said, “I’d feel
like I had Scissorfeet if I stepped into the store!” [Chuckles] She is very Latin and mordantly
funny.
Chris is doing a great job and she admires him for keeping an independent bookstore in the
neighborhood. I do too to the extent that, you know, we don’t want Book Culture to ever close.
Vural: Good.
Quinlan: I shouldn’t say that because Chris will want another reduction in his rent. Well, you try
and work with tenants. They have a bad time, an easy time, and you don’t want to lose a good
tenant, whether it’s a bookstore or any good tenant. We now have strong tenants in the Endicott,
and the rents have had to drop as much over the years as city store rents have dropped. If you
don’t recognize market fluctuations as an owner of stores, you’re in trouble.
Vural: So, I want to switch gears a little and ask you about your thoughts on sort of the
relationship between preservation and development and neighborhood change. I know you’ve
done a lot of work in historic preservation in your pro bono life.
Quinlan: Yes.

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Vural: So, how do you think about preservation and development and sort of neighborhood
change?
Quinlan: Well, there are extremes. I think some of the preservationists who want no change are
on the extremist side because, you know, I’ll use that example: “You took away my favorite shoe
repair, now there’s no shoe repair.” “Well, listen, there’s one two blocks south.” “Well, I don’t
like him.”
I do have a point of view—and I’m not talking about Columbus Avenue—we don’t really, I
don’t see that so much of an issue here as it may be on the Upper East Side, where, for instance,
Lexington Avenue has its configuration of buildings, not unlike those on Columbus, which are
basically twenty-, twenty-five-foot-wide buildings that go deep and they’ve always attracted
small mom-and-pops. So, when there’s a transition—let’s say in the tenant’s business, which no
one shops at anymore because forty years ago, let’s say, you bought radios there and he’s still
selling radios—I don’t know what—and a new type of retail use comes into the neighborhood,
they shouldn’t be denied the right to be there, that’s all I’m saying, because someone else’s time
is up through retirement or product obsolescence
So, there’s an extreme side. And my side, and to the extent that I speak out or listen in terms of
New York retailing, because, you know, the state Preservation League, which I have been
involved with, is not focused on this more local conversation. Basically, Friends of the Upper
East Side, which I am—I think I was on the board, I’m not sure if I am anymore [chuckles], but
I’m on the advisory committee—is very concerned. There have been supporters of retail rent
control for smaller stores, which would be a disaster—I won’t go into that, everybody else is.

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There’s a good reason why it’s unfair and a more realistic one why it won’t work to be frozen in
time and space.
So, the neighborhoods in New York are changing by the fact the people living in the areas are
changing. Just like Columbus Avenue. I don’t know what else I can say. That’s a reality.
Storefront design is very important to me because I know how successful it is in getting not only
a quality tenant, but getting good tenants and market-rate tenants better than if you have a bunch
of hodge—allow a bunch of hodgepodge signs. Besides, I like looking at them.
So, I work, you know, to the extent that I have any influence, and to the extent we have influence
as retail owners, we tend to have common signage required. Height of lettering, etcetera,
etcetera, and not half awnings and half no awnings. All awnings with a sign on the awning and
nothing else or no awnings and a sign over—so that kind of thing, I think that’s contributing to
the streetscape.
My pro bono interests are now more directed to open space preservation and historic building
preservation. I was the chairman of the Historic House Trust for three years and that was very
interesting to me. But nothing to do with my business. It’s like a repayment on the pro bono side
for my success on the business side. Much richer people will build a wing of a hospital with their
name on it, or not, let’s say, but more often with their name on it—hospital that specializes in
something like glaucoma because someone in their family had glaucoma. Fair enough.
Okay, I mean, that’s not bad, that’s good. It’s true all over, not just New York City. So, what I’m
doing is trying to restore, keep restoring, buildings, whether in New York or anywhere in New
York State—the Preservation League is New York State, basically funded by New York City

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residents and grants, supported, but private, while the Historic House Trust is under the umbrella
of the Parks Department.
But those are not to do with my business so much as my pro bono involvement. I enjoy it. I’m
not just doing it because I have to, I’m doing it because I like it.
Vural: Well, and it’s interesting because there’s obviously the land you were talking about, land
preservation, but in terms of building preservation it’s not directly your business, of course, but
it’s related because it’s about buildings.
Quinlan: Well, sure. And, you know, we do restorations even today, even though my son, Tim,
who you may—I forget if you’ve met him.
Vural: I met him the other day.
Quinlan: Yes, he’s busy [chuckles] building new buildings. He and I strongly believe in
contextualism. But the zoning law is something which I think has been overlooked for a long
time as a determinant of what’s built. In the sixties, those white brick buildings that everybody
laughs at, and if they’re co-ops, they sell at much less than ones that aren’t white and shiny.
Aside from design, buildings then were translations of the zoning code into a wedding cake
shape. And white brick—white shiny brick—was all the rage then. That wasn’t a zoning thing, it
was a miscalculation of taste. But you see the setbacks? That’s just translating the zoning code’s
requirements for setbacks. It’s not a design. And an awful lot of what you see being built or
renovated has to do with translating zoning rules into structures.
Now on Columbus, the height is zoning restricted to sixty feet and you can’t go there. And where
there are pockets of different high new buildings, which is due to permitted zoning rules, where

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builders were able to add to floor area and height by adding air rights from contiguous land and
then build higher. That, again, is zoning determined. But in a historic district, you cannot, not so
easy.
Vural: I wanted to ask you—we talked about this off the record the other day—you had a plan to
build above the New-York Historical Society in the 1980s. Can you tell me the story of that?
Quinlan: Well, you know, I could go on and on. It was interesting for me and I still think that
the board and the historical society would benefit from a new building plan, which we have in
my office. And I don’t think the timing is right right now, but it could be soon. Basically, I’ll go
back on history because I’m talking about today and that’s not a today subject.
It was at a time when the New-York Historical Society was basically being thought of as having
an archival function. An exception was its wonderful collection of Tiffany glass, which a
collector spent his life collecting when no one wanted it. It’s a beautiful collection. It’s probably
the best Tiffany collection anywhere outside of Tiffany’s. He had—this man [chuckles]—just
again a little bit of an—because it was a reason to enter the building, other than to deposit or
study archives—have them deposited after you died—that is what the architects did with their
plans. The Tiffany donor used to go out at night searching in the trash heaps in the Upper East
Side and collect discarded Tiffany glass, which he gave to the historical society.
Anyway, that collection came from a street scavenger with taste. That even surprised the trustees
when it was known. Now, other families left their silver and paintings. So, there were families
who had been connected through generations with the historical society. A great collection of
silver and some good paintings and all the great architects’ archives are there. That was its
function.

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It had a board, including descendants of the Dutch poltroons from the Hudson River, and others
more recent, with English backgrounds dating to colonial days. And the board was made up of
these genteel folk, only one—who had the misfortune, I think he’d say, of being chairman of not
only the New-York Historical Society but of the Museum of Natural History next door. He was
very supportive financially with family capital that had been preserved through generations,
through real estate actually, in Manhattan, starting with their sixteenth century Manhattan farms
to buildings with 100-year leaseholds that expired and new buildings would go up on its leased
lands. That turns out to be a good way to grow wealth and keep it in a family for generations.
The Chairman at that time was carrying one hundred percent of the society’s losses and had been
an important financial supporter of other New York City institutions as well. In my real estate
consulting days, which was another conversation we had earlier, I consulted for the family on
real estate issues.
So, when I was on my own and had received all this publicity about changing Columbus Avenue
and the Endicott, the lawyer for the Goelet Estate Company called me and said, “You know, Mr.
Goelet has a quandary as chair of the historical society. The board members contribute nothing.”
And he gave me some anecdotes, which I won’t report about individual board members, who
became board members because of ancestral connections. He added the fact that Mr. Goelet
wrote a check every year to cover the deficit. The society’s endowment had been eaten up, little
by little, until there was basically no endowment.
And it was a daunting building, two stories high with a cramped entrance in front, and for
reasons that were never clear to me, it was a city landmark because basically it was a base of a
building that was not finished. I’m not sure of the language that the lawyer used, but I was told

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the society wanted to monetize its real estate value and have something built over it, which could
produce an endowment, and at the same time, replace their library stacks, which were leaking.
So, that’s when I got called in. Would I be interested in developing a plan to build a residential
building over the historical society? So, I worked with the society to present a proposal for a
residential addition, but not, as I have to add, flush with the Central Park West facade. Set back
so that it didn’t complete the landmark, but not offending it.
Hugh Hardy of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, a recently deceased and a renowned architect, joined
with me—or I brought him on. The deal was that I would be responsible for paying for the cost
of the plans and the processing and so on, and I would then be the developer of the new
residential building, which would also encompass the society’s future expansion needs.
So I said, “Absolutely, I’d love to do that. Is this really landmarked?” “Oh, yes, it is.” But I have
to say, Hugh Hardy called it a “stump.” Architects are good with words [chuckles]. But you look
at it and, yes, it’s a base.
When that plan went for community comment, it energized the co-op owners of the building on
Seventy-seventh Street, who had a hundred feet of lot line windows facing the park, very
unattractive you have to say, but they were windows that would be blocked by the addition. The
owners were used to their views of Central Park from those windows, the whole stretch. They
raised a war chest, I think $50,000 at that time, and probably added to it—it was a lot more
money in 1982, and the tenants brought together groups of people, who didn’t need to put up
money necessarily but all coalesced to fight this. They used acronyms and all the usual protest
devices.

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So the project failed. It was really a very ambitious building. Today, one of my architects, David
Beer, who’s not formally practicing, did a plan, which I have. And what addition should be there
is quite nice, about half of the square footage of the original plan, and it gives a whole new sense
to the now very successful historical society, with the kind of facilities it could have, including
underground employees’ parking, because that’s the major issue that the employees and
neighbors have for personal reasons. Street parking spaces.
And so David Beer’s schematics exist, waiting. I haven’t done much about that. But something
will be done about it eventually and hopefully it’s with David’s design. The original protesters
hired an important architectural historian who decreed it to be one of the most beautiful
landmarks in New York. I won’t mention his name [chuckles]. But that was part of the process—
how an addition did not respect the landmark. I think “respect” was the word used.
I’d already spent quite a bit of money on this and the board chairman recognized it.
So, that was one Quinlan project that didn’t have wings, or I should say, hasn’t yet grown wings.
That faded away with the building plans still at the society and a model in the basement. People
say, what is this? Now, the New-York Historical Society is well led by generous financial world
people. They replaced the Old Guard and have done a wonderful job re-imagining the society. I
believe the change would not have occurred had my new building not been put forward. At the
time a merger with the Museum of the City of New York was brokered. When it was defeated, it
was like, so, guys, now what are you going to do about this place? This is a building with no
endowment, no support. A new group of committed supporters had full support of the
community and changes to the landmark were approved without incident.

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So, everybody went to work, including the ones who worked to defeat it. Everybody went to
work resulting in the New-York Historical Society’s current renaissance. So, you have to say, the
Lord works in mysterious ways [chuckles]. But they still need more space to do what they do
now so successfully. The stacks are still a mess. Who knows?
The New-York Historical Society now reflects what it really is and is no longer an archival
function for descendants of the old Dutch families on the Hudson River and their English
successors, or not just an archival repository for graduate students in architecture to go and look
at McKim, Mead & White’s drawings, which we used ourselves when we renovated the McKim
& White building on Seventy-second Street that I spoke about.
Yes, so it’s now what it is, and they have wonderful programs. And they recognize black history
to a large extent, all of which helped the society get funding. But memories of black history and
the exhibits they have with support from my friend Dick [Richard] Gilder. He was very
instrumental in raising money to make the New-York Historical Society what it is today. In fact
there’s something called “Gilder Way” now. I don’t know how the people on Seventy-seventh
Street who fought the project because of their concern for their lot line views feel about their
being on a Gilder Way instead of West Seventy-seventh Street. Nonetheless, Dick was very
instrumental—and donated fifty thousand Lincoln documents to the society archives with his
partner.
Vural: Yes, well, and they’ve really become both an archive and a public history center.
Quinlan: Oh, yes, the archive was always there but it was basically all there was. It was a place
where graduate students went for research or for Tiffany glass-lovers. At one time moving the

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archives to become part of the New York Public Library was being considered along with a
physical merger with the Museum of the City of New York, as mentioned.
Vural: The public part is very important and great.
Quinlan: The building is now all public. I mean, yes. I mean, with a separate storage facility for
the society’s donated art. They have many paintings in storage, like a lot of museums, in New
Jersey because it can’t afford New York art storage prices.
It’s a great institution and really a success story. And I will take some credit for that [laughs]. An
unintentional consequence, because it happened right after the project failure.
After the project’s failure, everybody then had to pitch in to reimagine this two-story block front
building. Okay, you guys—I mean, vociferous Landmarks West, everybody, was involved in it,
in finding a solution. The society went to Wall Street, not a bad idea, for people to contribute
who were looking for a cause to support.
Vural: Well, and there’s a Wall Street oral history project held there.
Quinlan: I’m not surprised.
Vural: I want to ask you about the founding of the BID [Columbus Avenue Business
Improvement District]. Huntley [Gill] told me that it was you who were a major force in making
the BID happen. Can you tell me about that?
Quinlan: Well, he’s being modest, yes. I think Huntley, who might at that time have been
managing Walker, Malloy for me, and also a graduate from the Columbia School of Historic
Preservation, and knowing the crowd in the Landmarks Commission, and so on, I think he
brought up the idea that Columbus Avenue could be a business improvement district, a BID. “I

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know the person to hire. There are already fifty or so BIDs in the boroughs of New York City all
over. You just need a group of owners, fifty-two percent of the owners, to agree with it,” because
they will be paying fifty-two percent of any property tax increases, which are based on the—I
think I’ve got this right—they’re based on the increment in value that’s created by actually
having a business improvement district, because it does improve neighborhoods. That
supplemental payment to the City goes back to the BID as funding. The Columbus Avenue
BID’s been extraordinary. It’s the smallest in the city—or was—and has done more than some of
the largest ones, like the Broadway one or even Lincoln Center, which is also very successful.
So, Huntley introduced me to Rusty Moore. Rusty Moore was a Vassar graduate, as was
Huntley, but decades before him. She had a voice like a lifelong whisky drinker and smoker, one
of those raspy voices. Rusty lived up on the Hudson. She had been hired over the years by civic
groups that wanted to put a BID together. She knew the process. There’s always a process and
it’s always more complicated than it should be. Rusty was dealing with the City approvals, and
she also had to get the owners with retail tenants to agree. Not the upstairs residential apartments,
because it was a retail BID.
And so with her on board and a lot of “only in New York” stories, which would take another
hour so I won’t tell you those, I mean, it’s very interesting how the BID came about. It took an
extra year because it took one year to get through some of the opponents, believe it or not. Who
would want to oppose this? Primarily opponents who were not in the proposed district. But that’s
part of another story.
Also, at that time [Rudy] Giuliani had become mayor and he put a—he stopped any new BIDs,
actually for two years, on the basis of complaints that BIDs were gentrifying neighborhoods,

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whatever that means, and pockets were being lined with perks. And not that Giuliani is the
epitome of a gentrification opponent [chuckles]. It was a political thing. He said, “Let’s stop and
see.” He was the mayor at that time. “Let’s stop and see and see where we are.” Because BIDs
came out of the Office of Business Services, which was the conduit to get approved, I believe he
was concerned about its being a rival power base. I think he thought BIDs were becoming a little
bit too powerful, politically, and the fact that at the time the head of the Office of Small Business
Services, Rob Walsh, was mentioned as a mayoral candidate scared him.
Whatever reason, we couldn’t get a BID through. But after four years we did, and with a budget
of about $175,000 a year when the one on Forty-second Street was $1.5 million a year. This
money, as I said, came from additional property taxes paid by the owners.
That’s what happened. And I do not like to take personal credit for things where a team is
involved, because there always are others. So, the Columbus Avenue Improvement District took
place and, you know, we got the other owners to support it. It’s a been a huge success.
Barbara Adler [executive director of the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District from
its founding] has to have her name in here. She’s extraordinary. I mean, there’s no one like her
running any BID in New York, and unfortunately she’s too good and will move on. But Barbara
just doesn’t stop. She makes noise and she gets things done. She gets Ronnie Eldridge to cough
up money or Helen Rosenthal to find grants.
We had wonderful meetings. Barbara was always very well prepared and was good at pointing
out when a tenant vacated. Rafe Evans, my employee, who handles all store leasing on
Columbus and elsewhere for us, he would give his report at our meetings about who’s going out
and who’s coming in and we’d learn why and, you know, what you have to do and what the

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owners of the buildings that he was talking about were doing and what rents were and so on. So,
we got a lot of good market information at meetings from people who knew every retail tenant’s
story and we were privy to leasing trends.
So, the Columbus Avenue BID was and is very successful.
Vural: So, before we say goodbye—I’m aware of the time, we need to wrap up—I wanted to ask
you to reflect a little bit. When you think about your life’s path and your work—you talked to me
the other day about how you were somebody who solved problems different from other people
and you liked the entrepreneurial kind of freer way of working in real estate. When you sort of
think about who you were as a young man and the work you’ve done to sort of change the Upper
West Side and Columbus Avenue specifically, what thoughts do you have about your journey
and your effect on the neighborhood?
Quinlan: Well, I like that word “journey.” I’ve been hearing it recently. It’s a nice new word.
And it’s a good word because that’s what we have, one journey, right, not two. And I think
relatively—not relatively—conscientiously when it’s time to give back, you want to give back to
something that helped your own career—or that you got so closely involved with, as in the case
of a medical facility, some family member who had an ailment, which you want to find a cure
for, that type of thing. So, that’s where your contribution in life will go.
So, I think I explained why I went in the direction I did. But I actually, viscerally, I think is the
word, I have loved to see something brought back, restored. I mean, a building that we’re doing
now—my wife and I are doing—in Old San Juan is a shell. Literally, it was a façade when we
bought it in the oldest part of Old San Juan, 1693 foundation. Why are we doing this? Why

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wouldn’t we just buy a house there that’s already restored? That’s a question I think I just
answered.
So, I love that side of it, and I love to see stuff happen, and I love to see other people do it. To
encourage it in New York, even without the J-51, which made it possible on such a large scale
during that early ten- or fifteen-year period of my career, and now through other incentives that
are being offered, not so much for renovations as for new buildings. Let’s say, I’d like to
encourage that in the city. I didn’t outgrow the city, but now I have this greater love for open
space, “green pastures” as in the Bible, and that is where I am focusing my later years. I support
and am involved with Cary Institute [Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies] in Millbrook and also
the American Farmland Trust. What is taking a lot of my free time now, usually from my office
on Columbus Avenue, where I am daily, is a nature preserve in the central mountains of Puerto
Rico that my wife and I have created.
So, I don’t remember if I’m answering your original question or not [chuckles]. I enjoy and can
afford to devote time and support to the pro bono side. It’s not something I have to do because a
tax accountant told me, “You need tax deductions.” And I love the arts, too. The theater and arts
are part of it. El Museo [del Barrio], the Puerto Rican art museum in New York City, which
could become the Latin American art museum in New York, where there is none now.
Vural: This is the Museo del Barrio?
Quinlan: It’s called El Museo del Barrio, which means “neighborhood museum.” Well, how
much art comes out of that? Its collection is now much broader. It was interesting to hear—to
read in his obituary that [Jean-Michel] Basquiat was half Puerto Rican. Even if it were possible,
why should his work belong in a secular museum?

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Vural: Basquiat?
Quinlan: Basquiat. Am I mistaken? The mind plays tricks. But, you know, there are not a lot of
local Puerto Rican artists or artists who want to be so secularized. So, now El Museo is de facto a
museum of Latin American art. It’s not called that, but I see it moving in that direction. City
politics could have blocked that, or kind of slowed it, because, you know, local politicians get
votes from locals. Why are you taking it away from being local? We give you free space—as
they do on 104th Street. It’s nothing to do with my past work. But I get involved in that. And
Anita Durst has a—I can hardly pronounce it but it’s called Chashama, which puts on events in
empty spaces in New York. And Annie [Anne] Hamburger, who—famous when she went to
work for Disney on the other coast, but nobody forgot her—she came back after ten years in Los
Angeles and now has her group again, which puts on art performances in unusual spaces, never
in theaters. I love the idea of unconventional or empty spaces in New York being used for theater
performances.
These kinds of performances—well, it’s not performance art, it’s actually real theater that
merges with the actual building space or environment where the performances take place. Our
son, Tim Quinlan, is part of a group in Brooklyn that does the same thing. He’s on the board of
Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, which supports a group of graffiti artists who came in from the
cold.
The group that uses a borrowed MTA [Metropolitan Transportation Authority] warehouse in
Brooklyn, where they bring together all these kids who were marking up and defacing buildings
around Brooklyn. Tim’s group has turned them all into wall artists. I met them. They did the side
of one of our buildings on Pacific Street. And these guys were right out of the hood, with bizarre

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haircuts and tattoos, They were having a ball, because now they’re not going to jail for being
here, they’re being honored. We had a big party in front of their six-story-high mural.
Vural: Great.
Quinlan: It’s not just restoration. But certain things are in your blood and you’d like to see
something brought back from a shell in a neighborhood, not destroyed. Zoning does control that
to an extent, as does rent control. Rent control doesn’t allow you to tear something down,
basically, but it obligates you to keep it. That’s one thing. And, I mean, that’s the good part or
the bad part [chuckles]. Rent stabilization, too, it’s the same idea. But then it doesn’t enable you
to keep it in shape for renovation, until it ends up to be just a shell. But then it can be renovated
or restored again. It’s hard to renovate something when you’re getting no rent to speak of.
Vural: So, before we say goodbye, is there anything else you want to tell me about your
thoughts about this neighborhood and what it means to you?
Quinlan: Well, my offices are here. Didn’t have to be. So, I can walk. Our management
company walks—we walk to everything. It’s near Lincoln Center. It’s a great location to be in
the Sixties. I walk down Columbus Avenue at least once a week, come down from The Endicott,
walking on our side of the avenue. We happen to have buildings on the avenue’s west side. I
don’t know why. As it happens, the west side of Columbus turned out to be a better retail side. I
don’t know if it’s because of our insistence on sign conformance and façade conformance. A lot
of it has to do with the fact it looks better.
So, I walk down Columbus once a week. I don’t go down to our properties in Chelsea once a
week, where we have a blockfront, or to the Village [Greenwich Village], where we have a
blockfront, or Houston Street, where we have retail frontage on Houston Street, or Tribeca near

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the High Line is on Tenth Avenue. I’m retired [chuckles]. My three times per week gym workout
with a ferocious ninety-pound Australian trainer helps keep me fit and standing straight.
Vural: And what is it about this stretch that you’re particularly attached to?
Quinlan: Oh, I feel like I know the stories of each one and I relive them and put aside the
nightmares I had during that early period.
Vural: Do you feel proud?
Quinlan: Well, I have to. You know, everybody has a life. You’re here once. When you look
back, you don’t want to die in despair. And I’ve been blessed with a positive attitude and
longevity—at least good health. I’m still asked every time we go to Puerto Rico and go through a
security tunnel, “Do you have any metal in you?” and I’m still answering, “No.” [Laughs] I
mean, the guards there say, “Really?” When I go through another scanner, I’m happy, even if I
have to raise my arms and they see me naked [laughs], which is actually what they do see, by the
way, passenger after passenger. They must be bored by now.
No, so I’m healthy and that’s when you’d be thankful for a lot of things. But one looks back and
I can look back and say it was worth it, even though I didn’t end up writing the great American
novel or teaching in Exeter [Phillips Exeter Academy] and having my summers off to travel. No,
that was a dream of an early time. I don’t regret it. I don’t regret missing that dream. That was a
dream that was a dream, not a reality.
No, I see tangible change everywhere. I think any real estate developer, from the most sensitive
to the least sensitive developer, has to pass his or her buildings, the results of what he’s done in
his life or his family’s done and feel a sense of pride, if not empowerment. I feel proud. Even our

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newer buildings that keep showing up here, on the walks, were pretty good designs. All good
designs. I can’t think of any that were just pedestrian for the sake of getting something done,
except for the very first. We always spent a little more to get a good design. Probably someone
will find an exception.
Vural: So, since you used the word, how do you think of yourself as a developer? You said
“some sensitive, some less sensitive.”
Quinlan: Well, it’s not a great word. It’s not used as a great word, because when you need a
scapegoat, it’s a developer—the word “developer” fits. I tend to use “owner” because it’s more
accurate, particularly since I’m not a developer in the sense that, you know, Hudson Yards,
Related, Vornado [Realty Trust] or these people building ever-higher buildings to be higher than
the next guy. They called it “weenie waving” in an early [chuckles]—I loved it—in an early New
York Magazine article. One of those people said it’s all about weenie waving. And he actually
went out of business trying to build taller than a contemporary. His name is [Bruce] Eichner. He
is back again.
No, we don’t do—you know, I don’t feel I’m part of that. It can be a small project and it can also
be very profitable. And since we don’t have a lot of entanglements—not entanglements—a lot of
other partners who we have to meet with on a regular basis, delaying progress—in fact, I can’t
really think of any, except one who’s a very close personal friend. We don’t even have to talk.
What we own, we own in our names.
I think of family and the Quinlan name, I feel strongly about one’s name and reputation. Sort of
old-fashioned. Recently, people don’t think generationally, but we do as a family, and my estate
planning is set up that way. I don’t know, is that an answer [chuckles]?

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Vural: Yes.
Quinlan: I don’t know where to stop.
Vural: Is there anything else you want to tell me before we say goodbye?
Quinlan: No, I don’t think so. I mean, no. I’m adding life stuff through that program
Storyworth, I think it’s called, where every week I have to answer a question about myself. It’s
kind of an easy memoir, because it does it for you, gives you the questions and then you can get
into it. There’s stuff I’m saying on StoryWorth, but it’s not for the public. It’s basically done for
the family. It’s touched upon a number of these subjects, including some of the store tenants that
I had some problems with, pedophiles and creeps like that, but who came with the decayed
buildings [chuckles]. So, it was like, you know, in those days waking up at 5 a.m. with a pit in
your stomach having to face some of this. Early memories. The pit in the stomach has gone away
[chuckles]. I don’t know when it went away [chuckles]. A long time ago.
Vural: So, let’s end on a different note. What are your hopes for this stretch of the Upper West
Side?
Quinlan: Well, I hope it reflects the neighborhood’s needs, in terms of retail, I guess, whether
it’s Broadway, Amsterdam, or Columbus, the three retail parallel strips. I see it happening and I
hope it continues to happen that it reflects the needs, the daily needs and the other needs, of the
people who live in the area so these will stay neighborhoods and not be homogenized and be
filled with national tenants. I don’t think that will happen here because there are other places like
Madison and Fifth Avenue and Tribeca and SoHo where these name tenants want to be. As long
as stores service the neighborhood that people can walk to, I think retail will be very successful.

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As Broadway has learned, some of the tenants didn’t get the customers they thought they would
be getting and are no longer there.
The uses that were there before did attract customers and they couldn’t afford the higher rents
these owners hoped they could get, and the tenants thought they would be justified in paying. So,
let’s hope Broadway retail changes with lower rents. It’s not that it’s on the brink of any disaster.
Someone comes in, they make a big mistake and they leave.
Vural: Do you have any nostalgia for the 1970s?
Quinlan: Well, yes. We went out to discos [chuckles], not Studio 54. I think that was another,
before I was married, I had a little, some peripheral, experiences with that crowd, but, you know,
I was married in ’69. I mean, it’s been a great marriage, a wonderful wife, and very—as I
mentioned earlier, very instrumental in my own career on a couple of levels.
So, no, I think the sixties and seventies were a great time [chuckles]. I loved it. I mean, even the
eighties, early eighties. But then I was in my thirties and forties and, you know—so the question
is kind of unfair because obviously when you’re in your [chuckles]—and you don’t have grey
hair and everybody thinks you’re good looking and so then you believe it because other people
do—and you get peacocky—the peacock years. Later I decided to be a little more modest
about—played down what I was doing. I can’t think of her name, yes it was Ruth Ford, an
actress at one point living in The Dakota who everybody knew because she was a friend of
Tennessee Williams and her brother was well-known. She kept a salon. One day at a cocktail
party, Ruth laid into me for “ruining” Columbus Avenue. That was a shock, I said, “What was
there before?” “Oh, I loved them. I loved every—” I said, “Well, do you know who was there
before? Because it was unpassable.” But she was angry, because Ruth was a—well, an elitist in

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Quinlan – Session 2 of 2

reverse: Nostalgie de la boue. But she was furious with me. And that bothered me very much,
because I thought there must be others like Ruth with their salons.
Anyway, the only thing I remember that bothered me during those early Dakota years was that
Ruth Ford in public, at that a party, criticized my work. Ruth was a wonderful, very funny
human being who loved to stir things up. But she didn’t like the competition in the Dakota.
Vural: Shall we say goodbye?
Quinlan: End of session? I told you my—the unsettling story. That was the last part. Yes, thank
you very much. I think you’ve been very patient in letting me spout.
Vural: I have totally enjoyed listening to you.
Quinlan: I hope so. Well, I don’t know, I’ve enjoyed remembering, because I didn’t plan—you
know, I did no rehearsal, as we understood wouldn’t be such a good idea. So, things came up,
yes.
Vural: Good. Thank you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]