The General Motors Building is a 50-story

Storey

A storey or story is any level part of a building that could be used by people...

, 705-foot (215 m) office tower in Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

, New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, facing Fifth Avenue

Fifth Avenue (Manhattan)

Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. The section of Fifth Avenue that crosses Midtown Manhattan, especially that between 49th Street and 60th Street, is lined with prestigious shops and is consistently ranked among...

 at 59th Street

59th Street (Manhattan)

59th Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan runs east-west, from York Avenue to the West Side Highway, with a discontinuity between Ninth Avenue/Columbus Avenue and Eighth Avenue/Central Park West for the Time Warner Center. Although it is bi-directional for most of its length, the...

 . The building is one of the few structures in Manhattan that occupies a full city block

City block

A city block, urban block or simply block is a central element of urban planning and urban design. A city block is the smallest area that is surrounded by streets. City blocks are the space for buildings within the street pattern of a city, they form the basic unit of a city's urban fabric...

. The building size is approximately 1,774,000 rentable square feet on a plot measuring 200 x 420 (84,350 square feet) that was formerly the site of the Savoy-Plaza Hotel. The tower was designed in the international style

International style (architecture)

The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...

 by Edward Durell Stone & Associates

Edward Durell Stone

Edward Durell Stone was a twentieth century American architect who worked primarily in the Modernist style.-Early life:...

 in association with Emery Roth & Sons

Emery Roth

Emery Roth was an American architect who designed many of the definitive New York City hotels and apartment buildings of the 1920s and 30s, incorporating Beaux-Arts and Art Deco details...

.

History

Started in 1964 and finished in 1968, the General Motors Building originally featured, in its street-level lobby, a showroom for the vehicles of General Motors

General Motors

General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...

. Currently, the lobby is the home of FAO Schwarz's flagship toy store. The premises of the FAO Schwarz toy store feature a sculpture of a stuffed bear in the plaza and oversized keyboard on the floor played by foot as seen in the film Big

Big

Big is a 1988 romantic comedy film directed by Penny Marshall and stars Tom Hanks as Josh Baskin, a young boy who makes a wish "to be big" to a magical fortune-telling machine and is then aged to adulthood overnight...

. The store won an award for its lighting in 2005.

The building is also home to CBS's The Early Show

The Early Show

The Early Show is an American television morning news talk show broadcast by CBS from New York City. The program airs live from 7 to 9 a.m. Eastern Time Monday through Friday; most affiliates in the Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones air the show on tape-delay from 7 to 9 a.m. local time. ...

.

Also in the building is the flagship Apple Store

Apple Store (retail)

The Apple Retail Store is a chain of retail stores owned and operated by Apple Inc., dealing in computers and consumer electronics. The stores sell Macintosh personal computers, software, iPods, iPads, iPhones, third-party accessories, and other consumer electronics such as Apple TV...

. The Apple Store entrance is a 32 ft (9.8 m) by 32 ft (9.8 m) by 32 ft (9.8 m) glass cube, likened to the Louvre Pyramid

Louvre Pyramid

The Louvre Pyramid is a large glass and metal pyramid, surrounded by three smaller pyramids, in the main courtyard of the Louvre Palace in Paris. The large pyramid serves as the main entrance to the Louvre Museum...

, and descent into the store is made via a glass elevator or a treadded spiral staircase surrounding it. This addition was designed by Apple and the firm of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. Other prominent tenants of the General Motors Building include the Estée Lauder Companies

Estée Lauder Companies

Estée Lauder Companies, Inc. is a manufacturer and marketer of prestige skincare, makeup, fragrance and hair care products. The company has its headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.-History:...

, international sports, entertainment & media giant IMG, the holding company Icahn Enterprises, and the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges

Weil, Gotshal & Manges

Weil, Gotshal & Manges is a prominent international law firm, one of the largest and most prestigious in the world with 1,200 lawyers and gross annual revenue in excess of $1.1 billion. The firm was founded in New York City in 1931 by Frank Weil, Sylvan Gotshal, and Horace Manges...

.

General Motors had a strong architectural and design presence in New York prior to the General Motors building, at both of its World's Fairs. Here it introduced the Futurama exhibit

Futurama (New York World's Fair)

Futurama was an exhibit/ride at the 1939 New York World's Fair designed by Norman Bel Geddes that tried to show the world 20 years into the future . Sponsored by the General Motors Corporation, the installation was characterised by its automated highways and vast suburbs...

at the 1939 New York World's Fair

1939 New York World's Fair

The 1939–40 New York World's Fair, which covered the of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park , was the second largest American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people...

. The architecture of this exhibition is attributed to Norman Bel Geddes

Norman Bel Geddes

Norman Melancton Bel Geddes was an American theatrical and industrial designer who focused on aerodynamics....

 and was a major piece of Streamline Moderne

Streamline Moderne

Streamline Moderne, sometimes referred to by either name alone or as Art Moderne, was a late type of the Art Deco design style which emerged during the 1930s...

 featuring sinuous ramps, and a guided circuitous route through the exhibition. The design of the General Motors office building was completed in the year of the 1964 New York World's Fair

1964 New York World's Fair

The 1964/1965 New York World's Fair was the third major world's fair to be held in New York City. Hailing itself as a "universal and international" exposition, the fair's theme was "Peace Through Understanding," dedicated to "Man's Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe";...

. More architecturally experimental than the office tower, this building was designed like a car with a ride and exhibitions contained inside. Behind a tilted and curved façade likened to a tail fin, Futurama II featured travel via pods and rovers to the moon, under ice and water, to the jungle and desert, the city of tomorrow, and exhibitions of futuristic cars. At General Motors' home in Detroit, many of its buildings had been designed by Albert Kahn including the high-rise Cadillac Place

Cadillac Place

Cadillac Place is an ornate high-rise class-A office complex in the New Center area of Detroit, Michigan constructed of steel, limestone, granite, and marble between 1919 and 1923 and was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 1985. The building houses several agencies of the State of Michigan...

, also known as the "General Motors Building".

The façade is an expression of unbroken verticality in "glistening white Georgia marble" 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

Paul Goldberger

Paul Goldberger is the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, where since 1997 he has written the magazine's celebrated "Sky Line" column. He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City...

 and Ada Louise Huxtable

Ada Louise Huxtable

Ada Louise Huxtable is an architecture critic and writer on architecture. In 1970 she was awarded the first ever Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for "distinguished criticism during 1969."...

 both wrote negative critical reviews of the building and even the first edition of the AIA Guide to New York City (1968), an unabashed apologia 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 elegant shopping amenities in favor of automobile salesmanship

Automotive industry

The automotive industry designs, develops, manufactures, markets, and sells motor vehicles, and is one of the world's most important economic sectors by revenue....

 (an auto showroom is particularly galling at the spot in New York most likely to honor the pedestrian)." The General Motors building was once co-owned by Donald Trump

Donald Trump

Donald John Trump, Sr. is an American business magnate, television personality and author. He is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Trump's extravagant lifestyle, outspoken manner and role on the NBC reality show The Apprentice have...

, bought with Conseco

Conseco

Conseco , originally Security Life of Indiana, is a financial services organization based in Carmel, Indiana. Conseco's insurance subsidiaries provide life insurance, annuity and supplemental health insurance products to more than 4 million customers in the United States...

 in 1998 for what was originally thought to be 800 million dollars, and once bore his name in four-foot gold letters. The cost turned out to be $878 million. Trump raised the controversial sunken plaza where few pedestrians had ventured, which had been criticised by Huxtable. In 2003, the General Motors building set the North American real estate sales record for the price of an office building when it was sold to the Macklowe Organization for USD

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

1.4 billion.

In February 2008, due to a credit crisis among lenders, the Macklowe Organization put the GM Building up for sale. It was 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 (Dubai based real estate private equity firm). It was the largest single asset transaction of 2008.

External links

• Official website
• in-Arch.net: The General Motors Building
• General Motors Building, New York City at Emporis.com
• General Motors Building at SkyscraperPage.com