Hotel Marguery

After the street was closed, the hotel built a 60 feet (18 m) tall carriage arch which allowed private access to the courtyard.

[3] On January 3, 1930, an explosion started a fire in the basement of the building which cut power and killed two people due to smoke inhalation.

[10] In June 1945, a wealthy textile executive named Albert E. Langford was shot to death in the hallway outside of his apartment on the seventh floor of the Hotel Marguery.

[3] Department store Wanamaker's also reportedly considered the site for an uptown location in addition to the main branch at Broadway and Ninth.

[3] Plans for the new structure faced a setback in 1946 when the Office of Price Administration denied Webb & Knapp's petition to evict the 116 residents of the building.

[16] The company planned a 39-story, 1 million square feet (93,000 m2) building designed by Harrison & Abramovitz which was approved in June 1947, despite the protests of the hotel tenants.

[20] In 1948, the hotel closed as it had lost its luster and was reportedly "heavily populated by ladies of the night and by gambling outfits.”[16] Due to the failure to evict the Marguery's tenants, Time gave up on the plans for a new tower in March 1950.

[3] The same year, Webb & Knapp unveiled plans to spend $50 million to erect a 44-story, 580 feet (180 m) tall office building on the site.

Some of the 250 tenants included Renault, Rheem Manufacturing Company, Georgia-Pacific, Nedick's, Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, Airlines for America, The Manila Times, and the United Nations delegations for Mexico, Ethiopia, Liberia, and Venezuela.