building at 39th Street and Broadway, spending $3 million in late 1925 to acquire the site immediately west of Hearst's lot. Plans for the 57th Street opera house were made public in January 1926. but the Met abandoned these plans two years later. In conjunction with the canceled opera house, Hearst had originally planned to construct a two-story office and retail building with a 2,500-seat theater, designed by Michael Bernstein. This was subsequently changed to a six-story office and theater building, to be designed by Thomas W. Lamb. Hearst's magazines were slated to be published three blocks west, on a block bounded by 11th and 12th Avenues between 54th and 55th Streets. By August 1926, the 11th Avenue site was abandoned, and Hearst had replaced Lamb, hiring Urban to design a magazine headquarters on the Eighth Avenue site. Because the proposed magazine headquarters was to be a skyscraper, Hearst also hired George B. Post & Sons, who had experience erecting skyscrapers. Excavation of the Hearst Magazine Building had started by June 1927. At the time, the section of Eighth Avenue between 42nd and 59th Streets was seeing rapid development, with surrounding realty values having increased 200 percent since the beginning of the decade. This was, in part, due to the development of the Independent Subway System's Eighth Avenue Line and zoning regulations that allowed for the development of skyscrapers on that part of Eighth Avenue. By January 1928, the Hearst Magazine Building was nearly completed. The Hearst Magazine Building ultimately cost $2 million (equivalent to $ million in ). Hearst Magazine Building Shortly after the Hearst Magazine Building's completion, Urban and Post drew up plans for a new 1,000-seat concert hall to be built at street level, with a 600-seat secondary auditorium in the basement, to be completed by 1929. The Hearst Corporation acquired the land under the building in 1930 for $2.25 million or $2.5 million. However, with the onset of the Great Depression shortly after the Hearst Magazine Building's completion, planning for its upper stories stalled for over a decade. The New York Evening Journal Inc., one of Hearst's newspapers, transferred ownership of the building to Hearst Magazines Inc. in 1937, at which point the building was valued as being worth $3.253 million. This was part of a reorganization of properties owned by the Hearst Corporation. By that point, Hearst owed $126 million (equivalent to $ billion in