Pyatidesyatiletny skyscraper General motors building visits the majority of visitors to new York – there is an Apple store. But, of course, the building is interesting not only for this.

It stands on Fifth Avenue, in front of the Pulitzer fountain at Grand army Plaza. If you look closely, you can see why the American architectural community was unhappy when this skyscraper was built here in 1968.

Grand army Plaza, finally took shape in 1916, was the idea of the sculptor Bitters. He thoroughly thought through the whole composition of the square, with three sides tightly framed buildings average for new York height, but the fourth – trees of Central Park. Standing on the East side of the house with luxury apartments, Savoy-Plaza hotel was located right on Fifth Avenue. It was demolished and built the General motors building. The skyscraper, one of the few in Manhattan, it took an entire quarter, but down Fifth Avenue from the line of the sidewalk went far inland and thus changed the space of the Grand army Plaza, as if pushing one of the walls on the square.

Architects angered not only that – the mere sight of the skyscraper designed in the international style and partially sunken into the earth, seemed to them wrong. The design of the building, designed by Edward Durella stone, concise: reaching for the sky parallel bands of white marble interspersed with bands of black glass. The lobby is richly decorated with marble from Greek quarries. Critics wrote that this marble, as the thin man in the body fat, locked the architecture itself, which begs her to release.

However, over the past decades, a skyscraper in the form of a striped rectangle has become an integral part of Manhattan. It is not owned by "General motors", now this is an office and shopping center. His office space is one of the most popular in new York, and the rent is the highest (not least because of the stunning views of Central Park). From an architectural point of view, the design of the entrance to the underground Apple store partly revives the idea Bitters cube of transparent greenish glass with the image of a bitten Apple creates the impression of a missing piece of the "wall".

When the tower was only built on its ground floor housed a showroom of cars produced by General motors". Now this place is the oldest in the U.S. toy store Schwarz, known for his huge soft toys made by hand, and a giant "walking piano" (on the keys you can go, thus removing the sounds). It played heroes of Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia in the movie "Big".