`Cosmopolitan's Historic Book Publishing And Real Estate Connection

(The following article first appeared in the 9/9/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly newspaper, Downtown.)

Cosmopolitan’s parent company also had a special interest in book publishing during the 1990s. As William Randolph Hearst Jr. wrote in 1991: “We also publish books under William Morris & Company, Arbor House, Avon and other imprints.” Forbes estimated the late 1980s value of Hearst’s book publishing business was about $200 million; and the Hearst media conglomerate received about 11 percent of its $3 billion in annual gross revenues during the 1990s from its book publishing operation.

About $550 million worth of real estate was also owned by Cosmopolitan’s parent company in the early 1990s, including 135,000 acres of timberland in Maine and Canada, about 200,000 acres of ranch land in California, Manhattan office buildings and condos, Bronx warehouses and a San Francisco office building and parking garage. Cosmopolitan’s editorial offices were located at 224 West 57th Street in Manhattan during the 1990s. [2008 Update: But since 2006, Cosmopolitan’s editorial office have been located within the 46-story Hearst Tower skyscraper building at West 57th Street and 8th Avenue.]

The Manhattan corporate headquarters of the Hearst Dynasty’s media conglomerate was located at 8th Avenue and West 57th Street in Manhattan during the 1990s—in a building owned by Hearst that was located just down the block from both CBS News’ TV studio and PBS’s NewsHour’s Manhattan television studio-affiliate. [2008 Update: In the 21st-century, the Hearst media conglomerate decided to use some of its surplus media monopolization profits to convert its Manhattan corporate headquarters into a much taller skyscraper. So since 2006, the corporate headquarters of the Hearst media conglomerate has been located in a reconstructed Hearst building: the 46-story Hearst Tower, on 57th Street near Eighth Avenue.]

(Downtown 9/9/92)

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