Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan
Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan | |
---|---|
Intercontinental Hotel Group | |
Height | 480 feet (150 m) |
Technical details | |
Floor count | 46 |
Design and construction | |
Architect(s) | Alan Lapidus |
Developer | KG Crowne Corp |
Other information | |
Number of rooms | 795 |
Parking | 159 spaces |
The Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan (originally the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Manhattan) is a hotel at 1601
The hotel was designed by Alan Lapidus and is 480 feet (150 m) tall with 46 floors. The
Developer
Site
The Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan occupies the eastern end of the
Historically, the site had contained Churchill's Restaurant, which had been built in 1910 and redesigned as a theater in 1937. The theater later became an adult movie theater called the Pussycat Cinema.[3] Just prior to the hotel's construction, the site had contained six pornographic businesses owned by Michael Zaffarano,[4] including the Pussycat Cinema and the Kitty Kat and Mardi Gras Topless Disco.[5][6] The Pussycat had contained a large neon sign; David W. Dunlap of The New York Times described the sign as an "exuberant cynosure of a naughtier, gaudier, vanishing Broadway".[6] There had also been some "pinball and souvenir shops" on the site.[7] Songwriter Irving Berlin had once also occupied a building on the site,[8][9] as the offices of Irving Berlin Inc. had been at 1607 Broadway between 1921 and 1933.[9]
Architecture
The Crowne Plaza Times Square was designed by Alan J. Lapidus,
Facade
The facade was designed with glass and pink granite.[8][13] Most of the facade is clad in reflective glass. The southeast and northeast corners are covered with granite, concealing the elevator shafts inside.[14] The center of the Broadway facade contains a granite arch measuring 100 feet (30 m) tall.[8][14][15] According to Lapidus, he wanted the arch's design to evoke the design of Wurlitzer organs from the 1930s and 1940s.[14][16] The New York Times compared the hotel to a "giant jukebox".[16]
The hotel was designed to comply with city regulations that required deep setbacks at the base, as well as large illuminated signs.[7] Accordingly, the hotel rooms are deeply set back from Broadway, and the first seven stories were initially planned to contain curving signs.[13] Lapidus wanted to include holographic displays, laser lighting displays, and waterfalls in the Crowne Plaza's design. At the time of the hotel's construction, light meter technology was not advanced enough to determine how much light these features emitted, so Lapidus left provisions so these features could be installed later. As built, the hotel had large billboards on its first 12 stories to comply with the regulations.[8][14] At the time of the hotel's opening, these signs had an annual maintenance cost of $100,000.[16] In 1995, a sign measuring 100 by 20 feet (30.5 by 6.1 m) was installed on the southern wall.[17]
Features
When the hotel was being built, it was variously cited as containing 765,[18][19] 770,[20][21] 778,[22] 780,[23] or 785 rooms.[4][7][24] A 1992 news article cited the hotel as having 770 rooms and 25 suites. The top four floors were known as the Crowne Plaza Club, which charged an additional fee.[25] Following a renovation in 2008, the 46th story was turned into a "butler floor" with 16 rooms; the floor was so named because guests were given complimentary services such as laundry and private transportation. In addition, the 128 rooms on the 41st through 45th floors were collectively labeled the "concierge levels".[26]
At ground level, escalators led to a lobby and reception area on the second floor.
The building was designed with approximately 200,000 square feet (19,000 m2) of office space on nine of the lower stories.
History
Times Square's Theater District had evolved into a business district after World War II.[32] Nonetheless, there were relatively few large developments there in the mid-20th century. Between 1958 and 1983, only twelve buildings with at least 100,000 square feet (9,300 m2) of space were developed in the 114-block area between Sixth Avenue, Times Square, Eighth Avenue, and Columbus Circle.[33] By the 1980s, there was high demand for office space in New York City.[34] During the decade, several hotels were developed around Times Square,[18][35] as well as in New York City in general, as a result of growing tourism.[36] These hotel developments were spurred by the success of the nearby New York Marriott Marquis, which had an occupancy rate of over 80 percent across nearly 2,000 rooms.[35] In addition, the city government had enacted a zoning bonus in 1982 for large new buildings in West Midtown, but the bonus was scheduled to expire in 1988.[35][37]
Construction
The block of Broadway between 48th and 49th Streets was owned by Michael Zaffarano, who for years resisted selling off his pornographic businesses, even as other landlords nearby were being cajoled to shutter their adult businesses. Zaffarano's son John inherited the sites in 1981 and was more agreeable to selling them after his father's death.
The
When construction started in 1988, the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza was one of four large new office projects being erected around Times Square,[45] as well as the largest of four hotels being erected there.[49][21] By that July, the hotel's superstructure was up to the fourth story.[18] The Crowne Plaza planned to charge a minimum of $175 per night for a single room, making it more expensive than its competitors nearby.[19][21] Nonetheless, Holiday Inn projected that the hotel would be profitable because the company already had a large number of frequent guests and business clients.[19] The Crowne Plaza was primarily targeted toward domestic business travelers, followed by international business clients and then leisure visitors.[27] As such, management planned to set aside 20 percent of its rooms for business clients, twice as much as in comparable hotels.[29] By 1989, the number of annual visitors to New York City had decreased for the first time in eight years due to the effects of Black Monday.[50][51] Nonetheless, the Crowne Plaza's manager Michael Silberstein expressed optimism that the decline was temporary.[50] Prior to the hotel's opening, Silberstein sent some of the Crowne Plaza's employees to Walt Disney World for training, saying that "Disney gives top-level service".[28]
Usage
Opening and early years
The Crowne Plaza opened on December 1, 1989,
Several months after the hotel opened, Zeckendorf had not leased the office space at the hotel's base.[60] Furthermore, there were no tenants for the signage, so parts of the exterior were covered up.[61] The amenity space was expanded by one story in 1992.[25][62] The same year, the Crowne Plaza was selected to host delegates for the 1992 Democratic Party presidential primaries from Arkansas, the home state of Bill Clinton, who eventually won the 1992 United States presidential election. The "relatively unknown" Crowne Plaza become more popular as a result.[63] The Crowne Plaza added a large sign on the southern wall in 1995, and the words "Holiday Inn" were removed from the signs on the hotel's exterior. The hotel's office space had also remained empty until the same year, when the American Management Association indicated its intent to sign a 150,000-square-foot (14,000 m2) lease there. The AMA was supposed to have been the original tenant of the space when the hotel was being developed.[17] Among the advertisers on the Crowne Plaza's facade was the Poland Spring Corporation, which in 1998 signed a three-year lease for a curved billboard at 48th Street and Broadway.[64]
The hotel also hosted events such as spirits expositions[65] and media conventions.[66] In addition, the Crowne Plaza was one of New York City's few hotels that accommodated sequestered jurors, as New York state law required jurors to remain sequestered during some types of criminal trials.[67] The hotel's operators hired Adam Tihany to redesign the interior in 1999.[68][69] The modifications included a renovation of the bar, which cost $2 million. The Crowne Plaza's manager, Drew Schlesinger, said the hotel's operators allowed management to refurbish the hotel "in tune with the whole gentrification of Times Square".[69]
Early 21st century
The hotel saw decreases in visitation following the
The Crowne Plaza shuttered in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, and Vornado stopped paying rent on the ground lease.[90][91] By that June, Vornado had gone into default on $330 million of debt.[91] The senior debt was placed for sale,[92] and Argent Ventures bought the $195 million senior mortgage that December for $90 million.[93][94] The Crowne Plaza remained closed because it was in foreclosure.[95] In September 2021, SL Green Realty bought a portion of the hotel site for $121 million from the Walber Broadway Company, which had owned that portion of the site since 1987.[96] Vornado, which wanted to sell its stake to Penson, claimed that the purchase violated its right of first refusal and sued SL Green.[91] A New York state judge ruled in April 2022 that SL Green had to sell its stake to Penson.[97]
The hotel reopened in November 2022,[98] and its owners filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection the next month.[98][99] In February 2023, a bankruptcy judge allowed the hotel's legal owner, Times Square JV LLC (controlled by Vornado), to have its creditors vote on whether the hotel should be sold or restructured.[100]
Reception
When the hotel was completed, Anne Kates of USA Today wrote that the "sense of adventure" in Lapidus's design had received mixed reception.[15] Jerry Adler of Newsweek wrote in 1989 that the hotel "may be the most gorgeous building in all Manhattan".[15][101] Inside the hotel, New York Times critic Terry Trucco wrote that the interior was "pleasingly anonymous, done in the pale colors and bland furnishings seen in big American hotels from coast to coast", though she found her 44th-story hotel room to be cramped.[102]
Paul Goldberger of The New York Times felt that the signs were more prominent than the building, saying that "it looks vastly better at night, when it is ablaze with neon, than it does during the day, when it seems only like a failed effort at elegance".[61] Goldberger further elaborated his dissent in a 1992 article, saying the facade "has ugly, unfinished brick waiting for a sign that may not come for years, a glaring offense at the pedestrian."[103] Eve M. Kahn of The Wall Street Journal described the Crowne Plaza as a "glitzy pink-granite-and-burgundy-glass jukebox" that sharply contrasted with the "restrained" design of 1585 Broadway.[104] Architect Robert A. M. Stern said that he would "prefer to say nothing" of the hotel, the only Lapidus design that Stern had experienced firsthand.[105]
See also
References
Notes
- New York State Liquor Authority, the listed owners included Zeckendorf, Jason D. Carter, Arthur G. Cohen, Elie Hirschfeld, Frank Stanton, and Zev Wolfson, as well as KG Crowne and KG Crowne Associates.[16]
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