McGraw-Hill Building

History and architecture

The 35-story blue-green McGraw-Hill Building sitting in the midst of parking lots , tenements and a bus station on the west side of Midtown, has been unique since its completion in 1931. Since its creation, the building has been hailed as New York's first monument to the International Style, reclaimed by proponents of the Moderne, and decried as an ugly "green elephant. It has been thought the key to great developments on the west side, and lamented as an "overinprovement" for a hopelessly depressed area.

As a design, it was the product of the gradual shift in architectural taste from the machine-age abstract decorativeness of the Moderne or Art Deco style to the corporate-age utility of the International Style, and of the constantly innovative and growing architectural genius of Raymond Hood. As a real-estate venture it was the product of the forces of extraordinary corporate growth in the 1920s which saw the merger of two small independent specialist publishing houses into a giant institution, and of the efficiency and economy-mindedness of James H. McGraw.