General Motors Building (Manhattan)

About

The General Motors Building (also the GM Building) is a 50-story, 705 ft (215 m) office tower at 767 Fifth Avenue at Grand Army Plaza on the southeast corner of Central Park, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The building occupies an entire city block between Fifth Avenue, 59th Street, Madison Avenue, and 58th Street on the site of the former Savoy-Plaza Hotel. It was designed in the International Style by Edward Durell Stone & Associates with Emery Roth & Sons and completed in 1968.

The GM Building was developed by London Merchant Securities and was half occupied by General Motors (GM) upon its opening. The building's facade is made of vertical piers of white Georgia marble, alternating with strips of glass. The building has about 1.7 million square feet (160,000 m2) of space, and the lobby originally contained a GM showroom, later an FAO Schwarz department store. The public plaza outside the building on Fifth Avenue was originally below grade but, after two renovations, contains the Apple Fifth Avenue entrance and a seating area above ground level. Architecture critics, including Paul Goldberger and Ada Louise Huxtable, widely disapproved of the building upon its completion.