Christopher Gray, architecture critic at The New York Times, criticized the building when it was topped out, saying that "it already has come to overpower what was a nicely balanced grouping." Paul Goldberger of the same newspaper wrote that the building held "more promise for the revival of Fifth Avenue than anything that has happened to that troubled boulevard in the last decade", despite his initial skepticism of the project. Goldberger dubbed it the "Best Tower Over the Store" in a 1991 column summarizing new buildings in New York City. Brendan Gill of The New Yorker wrote that 712 Fifth Avenue was "notable both as contemporary architecture and as a work of historic preservation" and that it offered "an especially attractive argument in favor of facadism". The author Eric Nash wrote that the multifaceted exterior ""looks right at home with the gray limestone of Rockefeller Center in the background and the marble front of Bergdorf Goodman in the foreground".
