Prior to the Hearst Tower's construction, the Hearst Magazine Building was regarded as an indication of unexecuted plans. One witness, writing to the LPC in 1982, said that the structure was designed "an unusual style, by an unusual unusually talented designer". Architectural writer Eric Nash wrote in 1999 that the Hearst Magazine Building, as it stood before the Hearst Tower's completion, was "a tantalizing vision of what might have been". Two years later, in 2001, Herbert Muschamp of "The New York Times" characterized Urban's original building as having a "peculiar pastiche", saying, "Urban, himself a hybrid of architect and stage designer, should have been an ideal choice to bridge the two areas. The result, however, was leaden." Christopher Gray, also for the "Times", wrote that "the Hearst building looked as much like some Wagnerian funerary monument as the headquarters of a publishing empire." William Randolph Hearst, the building's developer, left little indication about what he thought the Hearst Magazine Building represented, stating in a 1927 telegram that it was "an account of conspicuous architectural character".