their original condition. The case was settled out of court with a $6.2 million settlement. Solow, represented by David Boies, also sued JPMorgan Chase for not restoring its offices after moving out. In that case, the judge ruled against Solow, finding that JPMorgan had indeed tried to restore its space but that Solow had "substantially interfered" with JPMorgan's ability to do so. Solow sued W. R. Grace Company in 1999 for spraying asbestos on the building in the early 1970s, despite marketing the asbestos as a safe product. In addition, Solow and Bank of America had multiple legal disputes during the 2000s. In one such dispute, Solow had planned to evict the bank if one of the bank's former brokers was convicted of securities fraud, under a law that was normally used for evicting drug dealers and prostitutes. Critical reception When the building's plans were announced, Progressive Architecture derided the proposal as a literal "block-buster", saying that it "guarantees to obliterate the scale and the street activity" of the art and retail district on 57th Street. Upon its completion, 9 West 57th Street received a large amount of criticism for its design. A New York Times critic wrote in 1972, "a complaint voiced more frequently that the curved design of 9 West 57th Street has little relationship to the erect walls of its neighbors". Ada Louise Huxtable wrote for the same newspaper: "One can only pity one half of the Hotel Plaza's guests facing that 58th Street black glass wall". Arthur Drexler, in a foreword to a book about SOM's work, wrote that the controversy over the Solow Building was largely "because it does not rise straight up from the street (as architects have taught everyone to expect)". The Fifth Avenue Association, which issued architectural awards to new buildings around Fifth Avenue in 1974, criticized the Solow Building as having "urban bad manners", even as it gave Chermayeff an award for his "9" sculpture and praised the building's design details. Some of the criticism was directed toward the curved form in general. Paul Goldberger said that the Solow and Grace buildings both failed to "make certain gestures toward what exists around them". Jaquelin T. Robertson, the head of New York City's Office of Midtown Planning, likewise expressed his opposition to sloped structures, particularly those that were located in the middle of the block, as the Solow and Grace buildings both