Construction is rising at 150 West 48th Street. a 974-room hotel in Times Square. The 300,216-square-foot structure is designed by Gene Kaufman Architect for Sam Chang of McSam Hotel Group, which purchased the property from Rockefeller Group in early 2019 for $140 million, and received a $250 million construction loan before breaking ground last year. The site is located between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue and is part of the growing collection of new hotels rising around the famous crossroads.
Recent photos reveal the extraordinary progress that has occurred on the project since our last update in early August, when work was still at the foundation stages. Now construction stands several floors above street level, giving an impression of the building’s scale. The structure spans the entire width of the rectangular parcel and nearly abuts the sidewalk along West 48th Street. Progress should be quick, owing to the design’s relatively repetitive stack of floor slabs, columns, and walls, as well as a lack of setbacks. The site is surrounded by several old low-rise structures on the eastern and western ends, including the Cort Theatre at 138 West 48th Street.
150 West 48th Street. Photo by Michael Young
150 West 48th Street. Photo by Michael Young
150 West 48th Street. Photo by Michael Young
Kaufman’s project will join a host of other nearby hotels underway such as the Hard Rock Hotel at 159 West 48th Street, the RIU Hotel at 145 West 47th Street, the Margaritaville Resort at 560 Seventh Avenue, and TSX Broadway at 1568 Broadway.
No official completion date has been announced for 150 West 48th Street, but sometime in late 2021 or early 2022 is possible.
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This rendering includes that tower to the far right, ( a different ‘far right’ than we saw yesterday in DC )..anyway, it might confuse one for a second into thinking that…nah.
This is just plain awful, yikes!
Yikes! is the word. It is so incredibly bad that there are no words to describe it. My teeth hurt from looking at it, and I have implants.
It makes the last one of his hotels shown in the site, the one described as looking like it was drawn by a child, seem just mediocre. I would hope that he is the greatest interior architect in the world, though even that unlikely event would not make up for the blight on the urban landscape with which he has plagued this city.
Classic Kaufmann — crude, cheap and maxed out. If you needed a case study for downzoning Midtown building size, this would suit…
Grotesque
Even the cut / paste rendering (with no perspective) is Arch 101- and it would have received a very low passing grade, if that. Very sad.
looks like crap
Gene Kaufmann should sue his architecture school for malpractice. He has a very strong case.
Whhhyy? What is gonna beworse than the design is this horrible building will be immortalized in millions upon millions of tourists’ photos for decades to come.
Good to know NYY is fine with six dozen posts demanding affordable housing applications, some of which are probably spam bots, but jestful comments about Gene, T**** and the maga chaos we are living through right now gets the heave ho.
I approve most comments, esp re: GKA as long as they are within reason, so not sure what you are referencing here? I do not see anything in the trash bin….
?
Hard to believe, but Kaufman is a graduate of Cornell’s prestigious school of architecture. They really should rescind that hack’s degree!
Awful! Kaufman/Chang ‘team’ have blighted our city with budget, value-engineered hotels that the city is warehousing homeless residents in as hoteliers struggle for occupancy. While I’m certain this project was in the works long before the pandemic struck, it may be time to pause on hotel construction and re-evaluate the current stock. Tourism will certainly return to NYC but why continue to increase supply while a number of hotels are going under? BTW, wasn’t Chang retiring? If he is going to keep at it, perhaps he consider a new architect.