Grand Central Tower

Grand Central Tower (also known as 175 Park Avenue) was a scrapped proposal to have a skyscraper built atop Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, New York City. The terminal's then-owner, New York Central Railroad, wished to sell the site or its air rights by the 1950s in response to financial shortfalls. In 1954, two competing plans for the replacement of Grand Central Terminal were proposed, one by I. M. Pei and another by Fellheimer & Wagner. Though Wagner's proposal did not proceed, Pei modified his plans in 1956, creating a hyperboloid-shaped tower for which plans were never published. A modified plan, which later became the Pan Am Building, was approved in 1958 and constructed behind the terminal in 1963.

Penn Central, then the owner of Grand Central, put forth another plan for a skyscraper above Grand Central in 1968. It was designed by Marcel Breuer and would have been 950 feet (290 m) tall. The plan itself drew major opposition from the public and architects, especially from former U.S. first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, as it would have resulted in the destruction of the terminal. Breuer modified his plan in 1969, but the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission rejected both proposals, since the building was a designated city landmark. The rejections prompted a decade-long legal battle; the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of the city in Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, preventing the tower's construction.