General Motors Building (Manhattan)

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General Motors Building
Sherry Netherland Hotel jeh.JPG
General information
Status Complete
Type Offices, retail
Location 767 5th Ave, New York City, NY 10153, USA
Coordinates Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
Construction started 1964
Completed 1968
Owner Boston Properties
Height
Roof 705 ft (215 m)
Technical details
Floor count 50
Floor area Lua error in Module:Convert at line 1851: attempt to index local 'en_value' (a nil value).[1]
Design and construction
Architect Edward Durell Stone & Associates
Emery Roth & Sons
Developer Cecilia Benattar
Engineer The Office of James Ruderman

The General Motors Building is a 50-story, 705 ft (215 m) office tower at 767 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York City. The building, which is bound by Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue between 59th Street and 58th Street, is one of the few structures in Manhattan to occupy a full city block. With 1,774,000 net leasable square feet,[2] the tower sits on the site of the former Savoy-Plaza Hotel and affords views of Central Park. It was designed in the international style by Edward Durell Stone & Associates with Emery Roth & Sons and completed in 1968.

Currently owned by a joint venture of Boston Properties, Zhang Xin, and the Safra banking family, the GM Building remains one of New York's most recognized and expensive office properties. Rents typically exceed $100 per square foot; a 2013 transaction among minority owners valued the building around $3.4 billion.[3]

History

Apple Store glass cube at the base of the building
File:General Motors Building at 5th Avenue and 59th Street, Manhattan.jpg
From 59th Street

The building was built and developed by Cecilia Benattar, President and Chief Executive Officer of the North American holdings of the vast British holding company London Merchant Securities PLC.

Design

Its design was completed the same year the 1964 New York World's Fair opened. Construction began after demolition of the Savoy-Plaza in 1965, and was completed in 1968. The façade is an expression of unbroken verticality in "glistening white Georgia marble"[4] and sheets of glass. Both architectural firms were prolific skyscraper designers contributing to much of Manhattan's urban fabric; however, the property has been more attractive as a piece of real estate and as a home to its corporate tenants than it has to architecture critics. Paul Goldberger and Ada Louise Huxtable both wrote negative critical reviews of the building[5][6] and even the first edition of the AIA Guide to New York City (1968), an unabashed apology for International Modernism, noted, "The hue and cry over the new behemoth was based, not on architecture but, rather, first on the loss of the hotel's[note 1] elegant shopping amenities in favor of automobile salesmanship (an auto showroom is particularly galling at the spot in New York most likely to honor the pedestrian)."[7]

Post-GM

In 1998, Conseco and Donald Trump purchased the General Motors Building for $878 million from Corporate Property Investors[8][9][10] Trump raised the controversial sunken plaza where few pedestrians had ventured, which had been criticised by Huxtable, and installed his name in four-foot gold letters.[11]

The building was home to CBS's The Early Show from 1999 to 2012.

In 2003, Trump and partners sold the building for $1.4 billion, the highest price yet paid for a North American office building, to Macklowe Organization.[12][13]

In February 2008, due to a credit crisis among lenders, the Macklowe Organization put the GM Building on the market. It sold in May for an estimated $2.8 billion to a joint venture between Boston Properties, Goldman Sachs Real Estate Opportunities Fund (backed by funds from Kuwait and Qatar), and Meraas Capital (a Dubai-based real estate private equity firm). It was the largest single asset transaction of 2008.

Its street-level lobby originally featured a showroom for General Motors vehicles. Then, until 2015 the lobby was FAO Schwarz's flagship toy store, which was featured in the film Big and which won an award for its lighting in 2005.[14]

Also in the building is the flagship Apple Store, whose entrance is a 32 ft (9.8 m) glass cube that has been likened to the Louvre Pyramid[15] and which allows a descent into the store via glass elevator and spiral staircase. This addition was designed by Apple and the firm of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson.[16] Other prominent tenants of the General Motors Building include Estée Lauder Companies, Corning Incorporated, international sports, entertainment & media giant IMG, the hedge fund York Capital Management, the holding company Icahn Enterprises, and the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The site had contained the Savoy Hotel, with a limestone ground-floor façade and Beaux-Arts classical style that completed the former architectural unity of the Grand Army Plaza.

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ White 1968.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ White 1968, p. 157.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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External links

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