Stu Loeser, former press secretary to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, recently moved his political consultancy and PR firm to a top-floor loft at 1239 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan. The space, which features roof decks and a central fireplace, was occupied by Leonard Bernstein in 1945 and 1946, shortly after the conductor's breakthrough moment conducting the New York Philharmonic in 1943.
Loeser discovered the Bernstein connection after signing the lease and began creating what he calls the "Leonard Bernstein Microseum." The office now displays photographs of Bernstein at the fireplace and on the terrace, framed concert tickets, Playbills, LP jackets, and a reproduction of a 1943 interview from Seventeen magazine that described the space as "a stunning penthouse on top of a tall office building in a business section." A framed LP of Bernstein conducting the Airborne Symphony, with narration by Orson Welles, hangs near a photograph of the conductor at the same piano.
Loeser also included a display documenting a minor 1943 dispute between Bernstein, then conductor of the New York City Symphony at City Center, and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia over remarks the conductor made to a reporter about the institution's subsidy level. The office contains vintage media equipment from the Bakelite era, including a movie projector, press cameras, and vintage radios. Visual touches include a unisex restroom marked with shark and jet icons and another labeled "Lavatory Bathroom" with the initials L.B. emphasized.
Loeser noted that the apartment was Bernstein's first after moving to New York, predating the composer's later homes on Park Avenue in the 1960s and early '70s and the Dakota, where he spent his final decades.