For a shining moment, Times Mirror Square was LA's Camelot
LOS ANGELES - The headlines from Washington - Nixon and the Watergate hearings - seemed far away as guests strolled through the new corporate headquarters for Times Mirror Co.
Dorothy Buffum Chandler accompanied Mayor Tom Bradley and his wife, Ethel, through the executive dining rooms, named for the Picassos, Tamayos and Steinbergs on the walls. Architect William Pereira chatted with colleagues in the landscaped atrium beneath its high peaked skylight.
"No one would believe newspaper people work here," said Edie Wasserman, wife of Hollywood executive Lew Wasserman.
Norman Chandler, the former publisher and chairman of Times Mirror's executive committee, kept a low profile - his cancer well advanced by now - but the evening belonged to his wife, Buff. Dressed in a moire taffeta evening shirt and long purple skirt, she entertained as if this were her home.
"People look at the Times Mirror era as Camelot," Stephen Meier, who joined the company's communication department in 1977, said recently.
Memory often adds luster to prosperous times. Still, Camelot in 1973 - Times Mirror Co. with its flagship newspaper, the Los Angeles Times - seemed poised for national regard.
Fittingly it had its Round Table, as aviation executive Lee Atwood noted on that summer evening, a comment overheard by the paper's society editor.
Dominating the boardroom was a rosewood ring table, shaped like a doughnut, 19 feet in diameter. In the
