The Thursday Ramble: Offices

Sharon posted a photo of a spectacular building in London, that is filled with offices and that started me thinking about the offices I have worked in over the years. 

My first office, way back in the late 1970's was a rear corner in an old house converted to offices, with a view of the Vertical Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center across the Indian River. I shared the office with John, a retired CIA agent. A year or so later I changed firms, and didn't have an office for a while - working in the conference room or where ever space was free. From there we moved to a larger space with cubicles, what a dreadful place to work. The view from that first office was nice, but the building was a wreck, it blew into the middle of US-1 during a hurricane a couple of years after I moved away. 

In 1980 I started working for land developers and homebuilders in central Florida.  Offices were onsite, often in a garage finished to serve as a temporary office, sometimes in portable office trailers; rarely in a finished home. The nature of that work, was that the work locations changed often, sometimes every few weeks, at most every year or so. After a while I had an office kit that moved with me. A copy machine, desk lamps, even a small refrigerator. I would move in, settle in and make myself at home.  Most of the offices were nothing special, and I never grew fond of any them, none of them would I want to go back to. 

The last couple of years I was in law school, I had an office in the law school. I asked to serve as "editor" of an alumni magazine, that had suspended publication after the previous editor published an obituary of a very much still alive alumnus and significant donor to the law school.  The dean really was the editor, I think we published once in the two years I had keys to that office. It was an institutional office, nothing special, but it was a place to escape when I needed a minute. There was a locked closet in the office, that no one could find a key to. When I left they still had no idea what was locked in that closet. 

My first office after law school, was a converted hallway, with a collection of mismatched furniture. There was no heat or air conditioning in the space. I did a bunch of good work there. 

A couple of years later, we moved to a larger office, and I had a very large office, about 20 feet by 20 feet, with high ceilings and a large window (that opened.) The building had a been a residence for a nursing school run by an order of Nuns, when there was a hospital across the street.  The previous tenant was a mental health counseling service, the offices were soundproofed. The soundproofing was nice, the occasional visits by clients of the previous tenant could be a little disturbed. Two memories stand out, opening the window and shouting as someone who stole a case full of CDs out of my bosses unlocked car, and the afternoon the fireworks warehouse across the street burned down. Oh and there was the consistent talk about the building being haunted. My office was nice, the overall space lacked a reception area and I was seeing clients in the office, presenting a bit of a challenge. 

My first office in Washington DC is in the photo above. Just to the right of the last capital on the colonnade, a single window looking out onto H Street NW.  The building was about 100 years old, originally the Union Trust Bank Building. The office was large by DC standards, about 10 feet by 20 feet. I loved the view. I had individual heat and A/C (the windows were sealed shut.) My office was just about perfect. But there were challenges with the building, it was 100 years old with original plumbing and wiring. It didn't have parking, it was to large for our needs, and we were spread over 5 floors of the building. The interior offices were featureless. I understood why we moved, but I hated to leave. I would go back there again. The building was recently in the news. A restaurant went into the space on the ground floor that had been a bank, and that is where HWSNBNed was booed recently. 

From there we moved to a "modern" office building about three blocks north-east of the White House. My office was tiny, all but two offices were inside, meaning no window to the world. It was nice, modern, clean, sterile. It was a place to work, and not much more. It is one of those buildings that no one will cry when it is torn down. 

I never had the dream office, with vaulted windows, oak bookcases, and a view over a park or busy city street.