The glassed-in arcade at the rear of the building provided a convenient mid-block shortcut for pedestrians and a comfortable indoor space popular with tourists and midtown workers on lunch break. When the new landlord turned the mid-block pedestrian arcade into the Sony Plaza, home of the Sony Wonder Technology Lab, the outcry over the privatization of an area intended for public use was somewhat mitigated by the improvements Sony made to the corridor, such as expanding its square footage—an indication of the general success of this particular grid alteration. CY