Donald Trump wasn’t the first bumptious New York mogul equally
interested in real estate, entertainment, politics, and the female form in
multiple aspects: William Randolph Hearst got there first.
Trump has said that Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, a classic that was
notoriously inspired by Hearst’s career, is his favorite film. Yet he seems not
to have learned anything from its examination of the limits of
ambition and power. For that, he might have absorbed more by walking two blocks
west, from his own Trump Tower to Hearst Tower.
When construction began on what was then called the International Magazine Building in 1926, New York City was in the
midst of a construction frenzy that would climax in just a couple of years with
the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings.
Even so, Hearst proposed to add another element to
the city’s skyline. His reasoning might have been speculative, but it was
hardly insane: the publisher, who had been promoting the film career of his
mistress, former Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Marion Davies, was convinced that the
Broadway entertainment district would extend all the way up to Columbus Circle.
And why not? With Carnegie Hall already in the
neighborhood and the Metropolitan Opera announcing plans to move to a new home on
57th Street, Columbus Circle and its vicinity did experience a heady growth spurt
in the Roaring Twenties.
Anticipating the arrival of the opera, Hearst
enlisted the organization’s set designer, Joseph Urban—who had also done work
for him (remodeling the Criterion and Cosmopolitan theaters, and designing the
Ziegfeld Theater) and who would also become art director of Hearst's new film-making
studio, Cosmopolitan Productions. The interests of the architect and the building’s prime mover can be
seen in the main entrance of the building, which is flanked by Comedy and
Tragedy on the left and Music and Art on the right.
Looking at the structure now on West 57th
Street, however, I saw two buildings
of qujte dissimilar appearance this past weekend. The older, six-story base—the
one designated a New York City landmark in 1988—made me wonder if the one atop
it was some kind of monstrous modern architectural graft.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that the top
portion was, in fact, something of a revival of Hearst’s original intention for
the building. The tycoon wanted so much for his publishing enterprises that he
thought a skyscraper would be required. Urban didn’t have that kind of
experience, so the firm of George B. Post was enlisted for that part of the
project. (It didn't hurt that in hiring Post, the architect of Joseph Pulitzer's World Building, Hearst may have felt he was getting his own back against his old rival in New York's tabloid wars.)
The six-story base was finished in 1928. But then the Depression intervened, hobbling even the owner
of the greatest publishing empire the world had known to date, as Hearst staved
off bankruptcy only through the sale of many of his private assets and money
from his own faithful mistress, Davies. Hearst’s plan for a nine-story tower on top of his base lost momentum. Post’s attempt to revive the
proposal right after WWII likewise went nowhere.
Not until 2006 did the present 46-story structure,
designed by architect Norman Foster, open. Featuring a glass-and-steel diagrid
design, it was the first building to receive a Gold LEED rating for core and
shell and interiors in New York City.
The story of Hearst and his building should be
heeded not only by Trump, but also by any powerful man who continually tries to
exert his power in all sorts of different ways: Sooner or later, interlocking
circumstances will conspire to constrain even him, and his original scheme
will fall far short of fruition.
(I took the accompanying image of the Hearst Tower this
past weekend, from across the street at Symphony Plaza. So much has changed
since the first part of the structured opened 90 years ago: Hearst’s business
organization (now more focused on magazines than newspapers), his building, but
especially his reputation.)
