Excavation has begun at 150 West 48th Street in Midtown, site of 974-room hotel designed by Gene Kaufman Architect. The 330-foot-tall, 34-story project is being developed by Sam Chang of McSam Hotel Group, who purchased the lot for $140 million from Rockefeller Group in early 2019 and secured a $250 million construction loan. Rooms will occupy a total of 300,216 square feet, for an average of 308 square feet apiece.
Tectonic walked by the address to see the progress since permits were filed last December. Two excavators sit below street level and a substantial amount of earth has been removed from the site.
150 West 48th Street. Photo by Tectonic
The rendering on the construction fence shows a very lively pattern of beige, brown, and black-colored brick masonry walls surrounding an orderly grid of windows on the northern elevation. The massing is composed of three overlapping sections with floor-to-ceiling glass at their edges, and intermittent expansive sections of glass paneling are placed roughly every three to five levels in between the fenestration. The ground floor and main entrance are covered by a large rectangular canopy with multiple strips of light illuminating the sidewalk and signage. There will also be a cellar and a 20-foot-long rear yard.
150 West 48th Street is steps from the 47-50 Streets Rockefeller Center subway station, serviced by the B, D, F, and M trains and the 49th Street station, serviced by the N, R, and W trains. The project is one of several upcoming hotels in the vicinity of Times Square, and is by far the largest new hotel in New York since the opening of the nearby Marriott Marquis, designed by John Portman & Associates, in 1985. It will be the tenth-largest hotel overall in the city in terms of room count.
A completion date for 150 West 48th Street has not been announced.
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Good development into the ground below, in which the front of my face hits the design more than materials: Thank you.
Complete and total disaster
Kaufman has no shame. What a mess.
And how much more damage can Sam Chang do to the city?
His “designs” should be banned from New York, if not Earth. They’re ALL thoughtless, horrible monstrosities that don’t contribute anything positive to the built environment. Shame on him or anyone who “designs” this way just to get a job done… and poorly, at that.
Oh, Gene Kaufman, you never fail to disappoint with the utter awfulness of your buildings. Do you work at making these train wrecks, or does the ability just come naturally?
Hasn’t NYC suffered enough due to Convid-19, without the continuing spread of more “Changitis” destroying the skyline too?
Pray for a vaccine to stop the disease of “crapitecture”! ?
Just what we need-another empty hotel.
I’m surprised this is going forward, along with the other proposed hotels, given that tourism and business travel has vanished, likely never to return. Perhaps the existing hotels can all be converted to residential units.
Never to return? Really?
It’s how it seems was the point. But it will take a long time before people will feel safe to congregate or fly like before.
Agreed. It won’t be until there is a vaccine and the economy rebounds what we will he where we were again
Another ugly, homogenized building.
A weird thing about this design is, it wouldn’t be bad if Kaufman had left out the weird glass facades and just kept to the regular window grid.
My God that’s awful. Stop this building before it’s too late.
Its a cheap design. It doesnt need sexy design. Most of the occupants will be business and tourist spending 250 to 800. 80 percent occupany can pay it off in a couple decades.
The marriott is uglier. Yes there will be an occupancy issue over the mext year and a half. By then it should be 70 percent complete.
Its site is 1 stop from times square and central park. Business travlers will expense it.
As for the rockerfella family: they must have owned like 4 whole blocks in that area.
2045 he can sell it for 600 million? With a tidy profit made. No brainer construction.
I dont know kaufmann. But seems like hes the guy who designs the most cost effective and timeless design.
Timeless as in it will require little maintenance and will never get landmarked.