Chicago based General Growth Properties and Wharton Properties’ Jeffrey Sutton Have acquired Manhattan’s iconic Crown building from the Spitzer family for $1.75 billion, The New York Post reported. The purchase came only one day after the property became officially available for sale.
Spitzer Enterprises owned it together with their partners in the building the Winter family. They bought it from the Philippine government back in 1991 for only $93.6 million, leaving them with an almost 2, 000% profit in 23 years. Sutton already owns several nearby buildings.
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Located at 730 Fifth Ave on the southwest corner of W. 57th Street, The Crown Building holds 400.000 square feet of space including 35, 000 feet of retail space. Some of its tenants include Bulgari and Mikimoto ply gems and pearls, the literary agency ICM, private-equity firms KKR and Apollo Global Management.
Formerly known as the Heckscher Building, the office tower was designed by the architects Warren & Wetmore and built in 1921. The 26 story 416 foot high building got the name Crown in 1983 for its crown with gilded details that stands out at night in the city’s skyline.
It was once owned by the dictator Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines.
From TheCityReview.com:
“The small lobby was pleasantly renovated and redesigned in the early 1990′s with a great deal of glitz that has given it a brassy, beveled look that makes the space appear larger than it is.
The notable roof also boasts an elaborate, tall chimney on its southeast corner.
The office entrance is demure, but the three gilded female figures above the entrance, shown below, add grace even if they can’t seem to distract the nearly naked youth holding up the great outdoor clock over the entrance of Tiffany’s across the avenue.
Bulgari, the jeweler, transformed the corner retail space and retail frontage into a highly sculpted, abstract facade in pinkish pastel colors that had nothing to do with the rich ornamentation of this building as evidenced by the ornate spandrel bas-reliefs, one of which is shown at the left. The Bulgari facade was sophisticated, but not subtle, a modernistic intrusion whose boldness was on too small a scale to make a major impact and yet too insensitive to the building’s design quality to be excused. The Bulgari frontage was modified somewhat and “opened up” to be more inviting in the late 1990′s.”
