In early 2007, Hines purchased an empty lot on West 53rd Street from the Museum of Modern Art for $125 million. Soon after, the mega-developer unveiled its design for the 17,000-square-foot site: a slender, 75-story steel-framed skyscraper (pictured above) by French architect Jean Nouvel.
Plans for 53 West 53rd, more commonly known as Tower Verre or the MoMA Tower, included 120 condominiums, a 100-room hotel, a restaurant, and 50,000 square feet of gallery space for MoMA. Most notably, the building was slated to rise 1,250 feet, which would have made it taller than the 1,047-foot-tall Chrysler Building.
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