"It's always good to take the directions with a grain of salt, " said Owings of GPSTracklog.

CNN: Why your trusty GPS sometimes fails you

Returning as a student, like Mr Owings, he was met with polite curiosity, not the hostility he had feared.

ECONOMIST: Former refugees bring back skills and money

Hiltons were designed in the American-modern style developed from pioneering European ideas by the New York architectural partnership of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

ECONOMIST: Ideology of hotels

Enter one Osman Bah, 25, Owings Mills, MD, who truly seems to have gotten off on an exceptionally wrong foot at an early age.

FORBES: Bah Humbug As Sweepstakes Telephone Con Artist Gets Prison

Grace building just 12 blocks away on West 42nd Street, completed by Skidmore, Owings architect Gordon Bunshaft in 1974 and condemned as "overbearing" by then New York Times critic Paul Goldberger.

FORBES: On The Cover/Top Stories