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330 West 42nd Street
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The McGraw Hill Building at 330 West 42nd Street is a building 35 stories, 485 feet (148 m) high and 550,000-square-foot located in the Hell's Kitchen section of Manhattan, New York City.
The exterior walls of the building are panels of blue-green terra-cotta ceramic tiles, alternating with green-metal-framed windows, with a strongly horizontal orientation. The building was the only one in the city displayed in the influential International Style exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1932, and as such, it has also been cited as a landmark of Art Deco design. Located on West 42nd Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, above the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the McGraw-Hill Building was the tallest building in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood for decades, but lost that status with the construction of One Worldwide Plaza eight blocks to the north. It is still visible from a distance, but is dwarfed by the newly constructed Orion, a 58-story residential complex with a green exterior to its west on the same block.
Background
McGraw-Hill Companies bought the land in early 1930 as they were out growing their previous McGraw-Hill Building (Hill Publishing Building) at 475 Tenth Avenue. The building was designed by Raymond Hood. Construction began on December 1930 with the first rivet driven and was completed in 1931. McGraw-Hill moved into the building in October 1931. Printing operations occupied the lower floors to the sixth with the bindery on the fifth, press room on the sixth and composing room on the seventh floor. The ninth through 15th floors were rented out.
Pulp publisher Martin Goodman was based here by 1939. In that year, Goodman started up Timely Comics, Marvel Comics Golden Age common name. Timely later moved to the Empire State Building suite 1401.
As the street declined, the building was more a liability. McGraw-Hill moved out in 1972 to a new McGraw-Hill Building, while selling this building. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1989.
An angular metal sculpture, Boomerang, by the artist Owen Morrel was suspended on the side of the building. After several owners, Deco Towers Associates, a foreign investment group, became the owner in 1994. In 1998, a restoration of the building began. Boomerang was dismantled for recycling or junking. |