REAL ESTATE: Beauty Treatment

The shabbiest street in midtown Manhattan is the Avenue of the Americas, still known to Manhattanites by its old name, Sixth Avenue. Its hole-in-the-wall souvenir shops, cut-rate stores, bars, and delicatessens sprawl in an incongruous line between the luxury of Fifth Avenue and the tinsel of Broadway. But last week Sixth Avenue made an appointment for a beauty treatment. Real Estate Men Peter B. Ruffin and John Galbreath, who built Manhattan's 45-story new Socony Mobil Building (TIME, Oct. 1), announced plans for a 60-story, $50 million to $60 million stainless-steel-sheathed skyscraper, with the most floor space of any postwar U.S. office building.

The site on the east side of Sixth Avenue between 51st and 52nd Streets, just north of Radio City Music Hall, has been leased from the Equitable Life Assurance Society, which is financing the project and intends to build its own new home office directly across Sixth Avenue. One famed 51st Street institution to be affected is Toots Shor's Restaurant. Shor will hold out at his present base until a new home is built for him in a wing of the skyscraper, move in without missing a meal while the rest of the building is going up.