The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World: The Twin Towers, Windows on the World, and the Rebirth of New York

by Tom Roston

There is some gray area as to when Tozzoli had a final confrontation with Yamasaki, but the story goes that Baum played a part, telling the architect, “Look, Yama, all I’m asking for is a few inches. Who will ever see it 107 floors up in the air?” “I’ll see it,” the architect replied. “What do you mean,” Baum asked, “you’ll see it?” “When I die and go to heaven, I’ll pass by and see those windows,” Yamasaki said. Baum cracked, “What makes you think you’re going in that direction, Yama?”

Windows on the World would do a greater share of its preparation work in its own kitchen, but the rule for the restaurants and food stations below the 107th floor was to have Central Services, which covered twenty-seven thousand square feet, provide almost all the initial preparation of raw materials. For instance, cabbage would be sliced and slaw dressing mixed, and then the food services employees in the separate sites could mix the two together. “The only difference between us and a high-school cafeteria is care,” Baum said to a journalist of his future food Shangri-La.

“‘Windows is the most important thing in this complex. I don’t care if the place is burning down. If Windows has a problem, you fix it first,’” Bob DiChiara, then the top electrical operations supervisor for the building, recalls Tozzoli saying. “That was Guy’s mantra. Windows had to be successful. If it failed, he failed.”

As if he didn’t have enough on his plate. He was chasing down porcelain Rosenthal ashtrays, importing Sambonet coffee thermoses from Italy, and getting the proper materials for a brass railing that would hold up a movable ladder used in the City Lights Bar. “Everything we do is marketing,” Baum would say, meaning every item that a guest would see or touch or taste was another way to sell the restaurant.