Lehman office joins New York City tourist circuit

By Robert MacMillan and Jonathan Spicer

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Welcome to New York's latest tourist attraction: Lehman Brothers' headquarters.

It may be ghoulish, but as Lehman edges closer to outright failure, its currency as a tourist draw is rising.

While regulators and bankers flocked to the New York Federal Reserve in lower Manhattan on Sunday to decide Lehman's fate, shutterbugs descended on the bank's midtown Manhattan headquarters to catch a piece of history before it disappears.

"I don't know if it's still going to be Lehman in a couple months," said Dulles Wang, a fuels analyst at power company NRG Energy who lives near Madison Square Garden.

"It took a hundred years to build up a firm like this and it's sad if it goes away."

"I wish I'd taken a photo of Bear Stearns too," he added.

Lehman's headquarters on Seventh Avenue between 49th and 50th streets, just north of Times Square, may have some of the big video screens so associated with the "Crossroads of the World", but it isn't the kind of architectural wonder that usually attracts the T-shirt and camera crowd.

It features a recessed entrance with glass doors leading to the lobby. The company's name is affixed in gray, metal letters to glossy black walls flanking the doors.