Switching Brands in the Skyline

By David W. Dunlap
General Motors BuildingThe General Motors building, left, as it appeared soon after construction, seen from Columbus Circle. At right, the building, now known as the Newsweek Building or 3 Columbus Circle, as it appears today, with the CNN rooftop sign. (Drawing by J. W. Golinkin in “Towers of Manhattan,” 1928, and photo by David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)

The General Motors Building has already been renamed.

Harry Macklowe, the owner of the current General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue, made news last week by suggesting that buyers might reap tens of millions of dollars in extra income through the sale of naming rights to the building.

Less noticed was that the old General Motors Building at 1775 Broadway, more recently known as the Newsweek Building, was recently renamed 3 Columbus Circle as part of an extreme makeover by its owner, the Moinian Group.

General Motors buildingThe General Motors Building as it looks today from 57th Street and Broadway. (Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)

(It should be noted that 3 Columbus Circle has no frontage on Columbus Circle. Instead, it sits on a block bounded by Broadway, Eighth Avenue, 57th and 58th Streets.)

A new glass facade designed by the firm Gensler will obliterate evidence of the building’s history and heritage as a hub of Automobile Row. For now, a palisade of three-story Ionic columns, supporting a neo-Classical entablature, surrounds the base of the structure. This is a visible vestige of the Colonnade Building, designed by William Welles Bosworth and developed by John A. Harriss, a deputy police commissioner who also invested in real estate.

Describing the plan in February 1921, The Times noted that the columns would not be flattened in order to increase the size of the storefronts between them: “They will be set back from the building line several inches, and a statistician could figure out without much difficulty how much prospective rent Dr. Harriss might lose by using this space for attractive architectural treatment instead of sacrificing certain artistic elements for the almighty dollar.”

Tenants were drawn to the building all the same, as Broadway was the heart of the automotive industry in New York City. In 1922, the Hudson Motor Car Company leased the Colonnade Building’s principal storefront, at Broadway and 57th Street, as a sales room for its Essex line of automobiles. (In recent decades, this space was the home of Coliseum Books. It is now a Bank of America branch.)

General Motors BuildingRenamed 3 Columbus Circle, this is what the building will look like with a new glass curtain wall. (Photo: Gensler for the Moinian Group)

Until 1926, the three-story colonnade was all that stood on the site. Then, Shreve & Lamb designed a 22-story addition, principally for the General Motors Corporation. “The tenant will not only establish its Eastern executive and clerical headquarters in the new building,” The Times reported, “but arrangements will be made for private dining rooms, club rooms, barber shop and a board room seating 40 directors of the corporation.”

General Motors projected its name on the skyline from the top of the building. (That sign position, currently used by CNN, is offered by Moinian as an opportunity for “significant corporate branding.”) Eventually, G.M. occupied almost all of the building. It stayed there until 1968, when it moved across town to Fifth Avenue.

General Motors’ next move, my colleague Charles V. Bagli reports, will be to the Citigroup Center, where it is taking 135,000 square feet on a 10-year lease beginning next summer. Don’t hold your breath for a name change there.

Shreve & Lamb’s brown-brick facade was far simpler than the monumental colonnade. That incongruous combination of ornate base and spartan tower still speaks subtly — to anyone patient enough to listen — about the rise of Automobile Row in the early 20th century. But in a few months, it will be gone; another quirky corner of Manhattan that has been scrubbed, smoothed, polished, branded and lost.

General Motors buildingThe base of the General Motors Building was originally a three-story structure called the Colonnade Building, completed in 1923. Its monumental Ionic columns are still visible today, but would disappear in the pending renovation. (Photos: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times)

Comments are no longer being accepted.

Caroline Majors February 20, 2008 · 10:57 am

Modernist design’s not dead yet! /monty_python

Oh, the revisionist’s eye.

Peter Mullan February 20, 2008 · 11:47 am

What a waste, and a shame, most of all because it is so unnecessary. Watch as New York becomes more like Houston, or Charlotte, or Phoenix…

Adriane February 20, 2008 · 11:50 am

Why must everything modern be encased in glass? Through millions of years of architectural achievements we’ve suddenly decided that only one material is viable and we need all of our buildings to be a variation on a theme.

How boring! Don’t cover it in glass!

Vidiot February 20, 2008 · 12:10 pm

Why are contemporary architects seemingly allergic to brick? It’s a reasonably priced, colorful, and durable building material.

And glass slabs are getting dull — Moinian’s current plan will make it look like the Time Warner Center has spawned.

t February 20, 2008 · 12:10 pm

Do not cover this building in glass.

Kevin Fitzpatrick February 20, 2008 · 12:13 pm

Trump did the same thing with the old Commodore Hotel, now the Grand Hyatt. Look how terrible that looks. The Moinian Group should be ashamed.

John February 20, 2008 · 12:19 pm

In Brooklyn these days the standard seems to be a bland green-shaded glass curtain wall; at least to me it always appears green from a distance. Someone has stuck one up opposite the Central Library at Grand Army Plaza (and they’re all over Williamsburg now) and the effect is brutal (in the traditional meaning of the word). The empty lot that was there before would be preferable.

Jeff February 20, 2008 · 12:21 pm

Yawn, another glass encrusted building. Welcome to the 1980’s, Mr. Architect!

J Merring February 20, 2008 · 12:23 pm

Couldn’t agree more with the previous posts. As an ex-New Yorker (with a modernist bent) now living in a culturally and spiritually dead Atlanta, I often look at the proliferation of glass buildings here with a sense of bewilderment because they are all variations (and just barely, at that) on the same glass them. Too bad NYC seems headed in the same direction.

lancelot February 20, 2008 · 12:27 pm

Modern architecture is about the architect, and maybe (if we’re lucky) about how the abstract skyline will look from a distance. It’s rarely concerned with the mundane of how the city feels to the thousands of people who walk or drive past those buildings every day. Passersbye love quirky, stone buildings; glass, in contrast, is cold and offputting and, yes, boring (as #3 states).

Al Cyone February 20, 2008 · 12:28 pm

As I was riding in a bus down Fifth Avenue last Sunday, I glanced down 59th Street and, after locating the twin towers of the Time Warner Center, I spied the old “Essex House” sign.

At the time it struck me as a classic icon of “old New York” but now I think such “branding” could get out of hand.

The RCA building now has “GE” at the top (did it once say “SONY”?). The PanAm building, travesty though it is, is even worse with “MetLife” at the top (can Snoopy be far behind?). “CNN” seems bad enough (is there any connection with the building below?) but, compared with what comes next, might one day be viewed with nostalgia.

And don’t get me started on sports arenas! At least the new Yankee Stadium will, so far anyway, still be called “Yankee Stadium”. Albany’s Knickerbocker Arena, a venue that, if nothing else, offered a little history lesson with its original name, became the Pepsi Arena and is now the Times Union Center (after a local newspaper).

It’s sad, even for a capitalist, to think that everything’s for sale, that everything has a price.

Kzoo February 20, 2008 · 12:32 pm

and so goes yet another piece of what I always loved about New York City. It’s like building-botox
:-/

Tom February 20, 2008 · 12:33 pm

To needlessly shroud this classic building with glass in an attempt to appeal to the fleeting moment’s sense of style is regrettable. A visit to the monotonous, glass-cube cityscape of downtown Calgary will attest to that.

Joe February 20, 2008 · 12:37 pm

Where’s the Landmarks Preservation Commission when we need it?

At this rate, why don’t we cover Grand Central with a Javits Center-inspired glass wall? It would blend in with the Hyatt…

Gary February 20, 2008 · 12:42 pm

Very interesting news about G.M. Buildings old and new.

I remember my father working on details for the new G.M. Building for his old firm, Emery Roth & Sons. But I don’t remember discussing with him the old building (where I later browsed in Coliseum Books for hours and never knew its history.)

Some thoughts:

It’s prestigious to attach a place-name to your address, but it can make locating a building difficult without knowing the “real” street address. One or Two Penn Plaza may be easy to locate due to their size, but where is 14 Penn?

Adriane, I remember reading in a Roth promotional piece that the firm won a design award (I believe in the 1950’s) for taking a stone-clad building, stripping the exterior, and installing a glass curtain wall. Perhaps in that era, still influenced by Modernism, this was the thing to do. (The same was done in more recent times to an older building on the east side of the Avenue of the Americas around 43rd or 44th Street.)

I agree that it is a shame to lose interesting and historical architectural elements – whether columns and facades at 1775 Broadway in midtown, or an inspirational metal frieze at 99 Church Street downtown. At least a replica of the latter piece will live on in a corporate boardroom.

Greg Hoskins February 20, 2008 · 12:46 pm

Gensler’s design is an obscenity. I would have thought that entombing beautiful brick buildings in cheesy glass went out of fashion in the ’70’s, but how wrong I am. Another quality part of old New York’s fabric is needlessly trashed, transforming ever more of the city into a tawdry knock-off of Abu Dhabi. Gensler and Moinian should be sued.

Chris February 20, 2008 · 12:48 pm

In case of architectural emergency: break glass.

Theo February 20, 2008 · 1:03 pm

The 1920s brick building is what gives (or gave) NYC it’s character. I agree with everyone’s opinion. Is NYC becoming architecturally bland like so many American cities. So sad.

JG February 20, 2008 · 1:09 pm

While no fan of glass-clad buildings due to their numbing sameness, I have to confess that this particular building isn’t all that pretty in its current state. I walk past it every day on my way to work with nary a second glance at its details; whereas, I find I admire other buildings in the neighborhood almost daily (e.g., the buildings at 57th & 7th).

Andrew Porter February 20, 2008 · 1:26 pm

When I worked at 10 East 40th Street back in the 1960s the building management “updated” the lobby by covering its ornate ceiling with a bland, drop down ceiling — which has now been removed, revealing the original plaster work and painting. Similarly, the Lincoln Building on 42nd Street was updated, as were many office buildings in Midtown. The bland updated designs have now been removed. 1180 Avenue of the Americas was reclad with a new exterior. This has been done in many places. Of course, the Metropolitan Life Building was redone with the ornate exterior stripped, to the loss of the quirky details which give some many NYC landmarks their character.

Tom T. February 20, 2008 · 1:30 pm

That glass curtain wall is going to destroy a really nice brick building.

As for the address, no frontage on Columbus circle? Close enough, who cares.

But the architecture, what an absolute tragedy. How can these people be so obtuse, so completely senseless.

slider February 20, 2008 · 1:31 pm

Yeah, more glass. The skylines of most North American cities have become interchangeable. But how about that phony address?

David February 20, 2008 · 1:45 pm

Encasing a building in a new material is hardly design. It is the combination of designs from the past that together create the true beauty of a city scape.
Look at all the down towns that are now striping away the facades that were put up in the 60’s and 70’s in attempts to replicate the malls going up everywhere. The truly beautiful down towns have found their history and are embracing the unique designs of the past.
I agree with #16s comment, Gensler’s design is an obscenity. Of course the greater offense is that of the owner/developer.

Dan February 20, 2008 · 2:37 pm

What a shame. Is there any building – no matter how old, iconic or beloved – that’ll be spared the glass-curtain anonymity of developers like Moinian?

Why is the Landmarks Commission worried about ugly modernist buildings like the Silver Towers when Gotham City is getting torn down every day in favor of an impersonal, hygenic Glass City?

And how can people lament the destruction of Penn Station 40 years ago when equally monumental buildings can be destroyed today by any small-fry developer with a few panes of glass?

Commissioner Tierney, where are you on this one? Will you preserve the New York of cinema and dream or will you keep letting Double-A ballplayers like Moinian erase our big-league heritage?

Replace the block February 20, 2008 · 4:18 pm

I can’t believe the comments in this post. That building has no value architecturally(sp). Tear it down. I can think of buildings more worthy of these comments/energy.