In addition, he is a noted food critic. For the past 10 years he has co authored and constantly updated the best-selling Manhattan restaurant guide, The Underground Gourmet.
A native New Yorker, Milton Glaser has fond memories of his boyhood in the Bronx. He especially likes recalling an event that took place in 1933 — the year that Esquire was founded.
"When I was 4 years old, a cousin of mine said, 'Would you like to see a pigeon?' He had a paper bag with him and I thought he meant there was a pigeon in it. But then he took out a pencil and drew a picture of a bird. I was so astonished that you could invent reality that I never recovered from it. The only thing I wanted to do in my life was to make images."
Milton and his wife, Shirley, moved to the West Side last August. "I guess it was the opportunity to find the right physical space. I like the neighborhood because of the mix of working class, middle class, and upper class. … That really is the richest thing the urban scene offers." The number of Westside restaurants listed in The Underground Gourmet has sharply increased over the years. Among his favorite dining spots of all price ranges are Ying's on Columbus Avenue (at 70th St.), the Cafe des Artistes (1 West 67th St.), and the Harbin Inn (2637 Broadway).
Look in any New York subway station and you'll see a poster advertising the School of Visual Arts. It shows two identical men in a room. One is lying on a bed and the other is floating in the air. The caption reads: "Having a talent isn't worth much unless you know what to do with it." Milton Glaser, the designer of that poster, is a supreme example of a man with many talents who knows what to do with all of them.
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WESTSIDER PAUL GOLDBERGER
Architecture critic for the New York Times
12-3-77
"What is architecture? It's the whole built environment. It's the outside of a building, the inside, the function; it serves social needs, physical needs. … And a building has an obligation to work well with the buildings around it — at least in the city."
The speaker is Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for the New York Times. His immaculate suit and tie, refined manners, dry wit, and somewhat formal way of speaking seem to mark him a Timesman even more than the carefully researched, colorfully written articles that have poured out of his pen in the last four years.