Hearst Plaza

The six-story base of the tower you see today was built in 1928, but it is actually a remnant of a much grander, failed dream. Media mogul William Randolph Hearst purchased this property in the 1920s intending to anchor an entire district called Hearst Plaza, which he envisioned as a cultural and commercial hub that would dwarf Times Square. He designed the base to support a massive skyscraper and auditorium that would serve as the headquarters for his sprawling magazine empire, but the Great Depression and his own mounting debts stalled construction indefinitely. For nearly eighty years, the site remained a truncated, six-story Art Deco block—a lonely monument to an empire that never fully materialized on this corner.