Opening of the Fiorello H. La Guardia Telecommunications Center
Thirty-five years ago WNYC officially completed four years of construction that transformed its Depression-era recording studios and a master control room that hadn't been updated since 1953. Gone were the portly Ampex 350 tape decks, which had been lined up like washers in a laundromat. Absent were the flaking acoustic tiles which had been glued to studio walls with an adhesive formula that I'd rather not think about. And gone too, somewhat sadly, was any sense of what a state-of-the-art WPA-built radio station looked like in 1937.
In its place, however, were sleek, modern, carpeted studios with gray-ribbed foam rubber acoustic panels, mixing boards that control sound levels with linear faders instead of the dials of rotary potentiometers (a.k.a. 'pots') and a Master Control room with a battery of shiny Swiss-made Studer tape recorders. Indeed, we were still very much recording on analog tape and physically marking it with grease pencils and cutting it with razor blades. But we were also embarking on the digital realm and recording on VHS tape using an encoding system known as DBX 700.
The station's original press release described the new $3.3 million digs, whose design and construction had been planned and overseen by Chuck Corcoran, WNYC's Chief of operations, as follows:
The "brain" of the WNYC facility is its central distribution switcher. The switcher is responsible for sending audio throughout the plant and can route up to 96 different signals to 32 locations around the broadcast facility...In addition to WNYC's local broadcast operations, the station provides satellite transmission services, which the new facility will greatly enhance...The new facility houses six on-air control rooms and two studios which will be used for local and national broadcasts.
A day-long broadcast celebration was held to inaugurate the new facility including balloons and streamers raining down the facade of the Municipal Building, an audiotape-cutting (in lieu of a ribbon) ceremony, (pictured above), as well as a 'conversation' between Mayor Koch and 'Mayor La Guardia' and the premiere of a musical composition commissioned for the occasion. The work by Charles Morrow was Fanfare in the Air and is part of the audio segment above. The selection begins with hosts Nancy Shear and Steve Post bantering on the air before being switched to Mayor Koch from the fifth-floor portico of the Municipal Building to welcome everyone to the celebration and to hear Morrow's Fanfare. The audio above also includes the later 25th floor ceremonies with Mayor Koch and station director Mary Perot Nichols.
Below is Nancy Shear introducing Mayor Koch, who has a 'conversation' with Mayor La Guardia from December 11, 1985.
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