Daily News from New York, New York • 163

EDITED BY JOHN SULLIVAN DISAPPEARING ACT Harry Macklowe, the real-estate developer who sent a demolition contractor, under cover of night, to tear down an SRO hotel and a couple of adjacent buildings in Times Square early in 1985, may not be able to use the vacant land. His plan to raze the Lenox on W. 44th Street the night before a city moratorium on demolition of such SRO hotels became effective was but half-executed when police wrecking party. Macklowe, who was never arraigned for the offense (it's a misdemeanor), paid the city a $2 million settlement for the disruption, hoping perhaps to assuage the Buildings Department and gain permission to rebuild more lucrative real estate on the empty lots. But the city has responded recently by extending the moratorium for five years.

So the property sits, curiously calm amidst the Times A rl 1 if; iiiii; if; a au. Annnit-v AsKnpiaHnn whiph I The latest tr spllita y. KNc -JVl Annuity Association which The latest to sell its stopped the wee-hours Square frenzy. EDIFICE COMPLEX Manhattan's forest of skyscrapers grows ever more dense. But look again those steel-and-concrete trees may not really be what they claim.

Landmark towers in New York have an uncanny way of reflecting not so much what they are as what they were. Take the Chrysler, for instance. Walter P. Chrysler commissioned the 77-story building in 1928 as a monument to the automobile company that bore his name; though it never served as Chrysler Motors' international headquarters, the Cloud Club on the 60th floor served as backdrop to the activities of many Chrysler executives. And the inlaid-brick wheels, winged radiator caps and bumper gargoylesall takeoffs on a 1929 Chrysler-still telegraph its automotive inspiration.

Yet today, Chrysler Corp. neither owns nor rents any space in its namesake monolith. The Empire State Building, another case in point, is not owned by the State of New Tfork or anything named "Empire State" but by the Prudential Insurance Company of America. Helmsley-Spear leases the property from its absentee landlord (Prudential's corporate HQ is in Newark). Other companies continue to rent space in buildings named after them, although they have forsaken ownership.

One of the biggest to sell was Seagram, whose monumental black box (designed by Mies van der Rohe) on Park Avenue caused a sensation and a trend throughout New York. Although Seagram occupies about 10 floors, the Teachers Insurance and executive domain was Exxon; that structure at Sixth and 49th now belongs to Mitsui Fudosan, a Japanese trading company. It's now a rarity to find a skyscraper owned and operated by the company for which it's named. But one notable example is the Wool-worth Building, on Broadway at Barclay Street The 60-story, nec-Gothic pile, built in 1913, perseveres as international headquarters for the five-and-dime retail- takes up no floors has owned the pile since 1980. Pan Am followed suit in 1981, selling its 59-story slab atop Grand Central Terminal to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.

Pan Am Airlines, however, remains the building's largest tenant Time-Life which once owned 45 of the block it occupies at Sixth Avenue and 50th Street, sold its share to Rockefeller Center Inc. late last year. Another Rockefeller Center fixture (its anchor, really), the RCA Building, has but a few employes on site. After the company's recent merger with General Electric, RCA moved most of its operations to other locales, including the GE Building at 51st and Lexington, which started out, oddly enough, as the RCA 'Victor Building. Workers buff Woolworth Building spire ia 1932 (above) as Frank W.

counts his nickels and dimes ia lobby (left). Empire State (above left) has out-of-town owner. Seen or heard anything that made you hit your head and exlaim "Only in New Write us. Be specific. We pay $25 per published entry.

Write: Only in New York, Daily News Magazine, S20 E. i2d SL, New York, N.Y. 10017. Include daytime phone number and address. No items acknowledged or returned.

ing empire founded by Frank W. Woolworth. (He paid cash for the place, by the way.) With corporate mergers the order of the day, expect a lot more confusion in the future. It all goes to prove an old New 'York saying: don't judge a block by its cover. DAILY NEWS MAGAZINE MAY 10, 1987 3.