Get Smart Moment

We have recently had a few occasions to go to the Canadian Consulate of New York. It is conveniently located around the corner as part of the huge Rockefeller Center complex of buildings. My first visit was the most interesting. I knew where the building was as we had passed it dozens of times and the Canadian Flag flies outside the building next to the American Flag. But I had no idea where the Consulate was located within the building. There are probably eight separate entrances to the skyscraper and I just picked one at random. I was greeted by a doorman who told me the consulate was closed that day. I was pretty sure he was wrong and I asked for directions. He called on his phone a few seconds later a huge elevator door opened about five feet away. It was empty except for an attendant and it appeared that she was on duty full time. This elevator was big enough to fit a small car in it. She took me down below ground to a small white room and unlocked a door to a long corridor that was completely white and bare and completely void of people this day. As I headed toward the far end I heard the door close behind me and the click. I couldn’t help but think of “Get Smart” at this point and I snapped a photo of it on one of my later visits. The office was indeed open that day. Of course I had to go through what is now the requisite metal detector. After that it looked pretty much like a doctor’s waiting room. I went to the bullet proof window and got my questions answered and some forms and pamphlets.


I went out to retrace my steps in the block long hallway but when I got to the door the knob wouldn’t budge. As it was all white on white I looked around for a bit to see if perhaps there was another door that I had missed but I couldn’t detect any. I knocked on the door for a while but there were no signs of anyone around. I finally gave up and found some unlocked doors at the opposite end of the hall. These led to another hallway that eventually wound around to the Rockefeller subway station and from there I finally found an elevator to get me back to street level. However, to complete the “Get Smart” angle it popped in the middle of a sidewalk at least a block from where I started out. As you can see in the photo the elevator does resemble a phone booth.