The New York Times Building

This is the lobby of the Renzo Piano-designed New York Times Building, as photographed on a bitterly cold Saturday through the window of an adjoining shop. Annie Leibovitz has, of course, photographed the building far better than I ever could, and I've only been inside once, for a quick cup of tea with an editor for whom, in another life, for another publication, I once wrote.

Still, I love the idea of this building—the way it somehow crafts light, the way trees grow inside, the way the whol...