"Oh, you mean the Parke-Bernet's new gallery [at 76th & Madison]; it's the 
best damn building in New York."
-- a taxi driver's remarks, according to William Adams Delano at the opening 
of the building in 1949, as reported in the Journal of the American Institute 
of Architects, January 1950.  (The building was designed by Walker & Poor.)

"There isn't a taxi driver in New York who won't say that the General Motors 
Building [at 58th and Fifth Avenue] is the most beautiful thing in the city."
-- Edward Durrell Stone to The New York Times in 1972, referring the building 
he designed, completed in 1968.

"If you stop a cab driver in the street he'll say ‘That's sad, it doesn't 
belong there, it will be a monster thing jutting into the sky.'"
--Woody Allen, describing his opposition to Charles Platt's design for a 17 
story tower at 91st and Madison, The New York Times, March 12, 2000.  
[Thanks, Derek!]

Submitted by,  Christopher Gray (once almost picked up Ahmet Ertegun)