The 43rd Floor

Sperry had a long, proud history with roots that traced back to the Sperry Gyroscope Company founded in 1910 by Elmer Ambrose Sperry. Univac was the first commercial computer. Its forerunner, the ENIAC, was instrumental in weapons development during World War II.  Sperry was a key supplier of avionics and naval weapon systems to the Defense Department.  Its facilities in Long Island had been used as the temporary headquarters for the United Nations following World War II prior to the construction of the UN Headquarters.

I was given an autographed copy of General Douglas MacArthur's biography, which included a brief account of how MacArthur had been named Chairman of Remington Rand after he was relieved of command by Harry Truman during the Korean War and then became Chairman of Sperry Rand upon the merger of Sperry with Remington Rand. Sperry, with Douglas MacArthur at the helm, may have been what Eisenhower envisioned when he spoke of the powerful military industrial complex.

Sperry clearly had been a formidable enterprise in the years following World War II when America was at its industrial apex.  In the decades to follow, American industrial dominance was to erode as emphasis shifted to financial services.  By 1985, a computer, farm equipment, and defense systems company seemed somewhat out of place in midtown Manhattan. The corporation would soon need to move its corporate offices to the location of a major division in order to reduce costs and increase efficiency. While I knew a change was coming, I enjoyed every day I worked in Manhattan.

The Sperry building was located at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, next to Rockefeller Center.  Sperry's executive suite consisted of a few offices and a boardroom on the 43rd floor. Upon first arriving at the 43rd floor I felt I was entering into an aging corporate aristocracy. The common areas and boardroom appeared to have been furnished in decades past, which gave them authenticity and character, but also hinted that hard times were at hand.