The building has about 1.7 million square feet (160,000 m2) of space, and the lobby originally contained a GM showroom, later an FAO Schwarz department store.

Architecture critics, including Paul Goldberger and Ada Louise Huxtable, widely disapproved of the building upon its completion.

Macklowe sold the building in 2008 to the joint venture of Boston Properties, Zhang Xin, and the Safra banking family for $2.8 billion.

[20] The load-bearing marble piers are rhomboid in shape and contain a 7⁄8-inch (22 mm) thick cladding, behind which are hollow concrete columns with service ducts.

[21] At the ground and second stories, the General Motors Building was originally clad with thirty large windows, measuring 30 feet (9.1 m) tall and 0.875 inches (22.2 mm) thick.

Ten of these panels, weighing 3,080 pounds (1,400 kg) and measuring 9 feet (2.7 m) wide, were the largest single windows ever made for a building at the time of their installation.

[24][25] The building's prestige was in part due to its proximity to Central Park, as well as its 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m2) floor plates, which tended to attract larger companies.

[28] Originally, the north wing of the lobby had a GM showroom[28] with 20,000 square feet (1,900 m2) of display rooms on the ground and mezzanine levels.

The Savoy Club is clad in travertine, oak, and terrazzo, and the design of its tables and carpets is based on the decorations in the lobby.

[36] Because of its position under ground level, it was seen as an "underused, unattractive desolate place" by the 1990s, with green artificial turf and mostly empty retail space.

[37] Slightly elevated groves of trees were installed on the plaza's north and south ends while fountains, benches, and a 21,500-square-foot (2,000 m2) retail pavilion were built below grade, accessed by stairs at the center of the Fifth Avenue facade.

Shallow decorative pools were installed on the north and south sections of the plaza, surrounded by tables, chairs, planters, and a few honey locust trees.

[42] In August 1964, the media reported that the Savoy-Plaza would be razed at the end of the 1965 World's Fair, and a 40-story building occupied primarily by GM would be constructed on the site.

[14] In December 1964, Stone presented plans for a 48-story office tower on the Savoy-Plaza Hotel site, with a one-story podium and vertical marble strips on the facade.

[47] Cecilia Benattar, president and chief executive officer of the North American holdings of London Merchants, was to oversee development of the new structure.

[74] Additional tenants signed leases for the GM Building during the decade, including Bank of Boston International[75] and Mercantile and Marine Inc.[76] A pipe bomb, linked to the terrorist group Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña, was placed outside the GM Building in 1977, but a homeless man dismantled the bomb before it could detonate.

[69] Two months later, General Motors announced their intention to sell the building for more than $500 million while still maintaining their corporate office space.

The deal, believed to represent the largest mortgage ever for an office property in New York City, also made CPI the managers of the building.

[83] The loan allowed GM, which then had a low supply of cash, to increase its current assets while also deferring payment of the city's capital gains tax.

[90] In 1986, FAO Schwarz moved its flagship toy store to the General Motors Building's ground-floor retail space.

[100] The winning bid came from investment firm Conseco and real-estate developer Donald Trump, who purchased the building for $878 million.

[107] By late 1999, Trump said he had leased office space in the building at $100 per square foot ($1,100/m2);[108] at the time, the tenants included Bank Melli Iran.

[110] Disagreement arose in 2000 when Stephen Hilbert resigned as the chief executive of Conseco; he was replaced by Gary Wendt, who sought to sell the company's stake to Trump for at least $295 million.

After the September 11 attacks, Deutsche Bank was unable to provide such a guarantee because the General Motors Building was seen as a "trophy" property vulnerable to terrorism.

He also received a floating-rate mortgage from Deutsche Bank, as well as short-term equity and debt financing from George Soros and Vornado Realty Trust, using other buildings as collateral.

[121] The property was first recapitalized in January 2005, with new senior debt of $1.1 billion, and $300 million of preferred equity from Jamestown, a German retail real estate syndicator.

[128] Such a sale would generate tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue for the city government and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority due to its high price.

[21] Even the first edition of the AIA Guide to New York City (1968), which normally wrote positively of International-style modernist designs, stated, "The hue and cry over the new behemoth was based, not on architecture but, rather, first on the loss of the [Savoy] hotel's elegant shopping amenities in favor of automobile salesmanship (an auto showroom is particularly galling at the spot in New York most likely to honor the pedestrian).

[152] Carter B. Horsley wrote: "The GM Building actually tried to make some good urban design gestures [but] the result here fell short of the mark considerably.

William D. Smith, writing for The New York Times at the public opening in 1968, said, "It was hard to find anyone who did not like the building or the idea of an automobile showroom on Fifth Avenue.