I found an article which includes these really interesting models of the Metropolitan Life North Building dating from 1929-- an amazingly clear look at the original visionary designs!
Caption for the second image from the website:
Theodore Conrad (1910–1994), model of the winning design for the Metropolitan Life North Building, c. 1929.
This seems to imply that MetLife planned to go ahead with asymmetrical, squared design in 1929 rather than the more well known, ESB-like massing.
A further model of the eventual 28 storey MetLife North Building:
The book that these are from seems like it would be particularly interesting to some forumers here: