255 W. 43rd St., New York, New York. County/parish: New York.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places May 04, 1995. NRIS 95000530.
1 contributing building.
The Times Square Hotel is an apartment building and former hotel at 255 West 43rd Street, near Times Square, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. Completed in 1923, the 15-story building was designed in the Renaissance Revival style by the firm of Gronenberg & Leuchtag; it is the firm's only hotel design. Since 1991, it has served as a supportive housing shelter operated by the nonprofit organization Breaking Ground (formerly Common Ground). The hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The facade is divided vertically into multiple bays facing Eighth Avenue to the west and 43rd Street to the south. The first two stories of the facade are clad in white limestone, while the other stories are clad in tan brick with terracotta decorations. Above the first two stories, three light courts on the southern facade divide the hotel into four wings. Originally, the hotel had a dozen storefronts in addition to offices, lounging rooms, and reading rooms. Rooms in the wings extended southward from a "spine" near the north side of the building. The lobby was the only major public room that remained intact by the 1990s. When the hotel was built, it contained 875 bedrooms, but since the 1990s, it has contained 652 units of supportive housing.
The structure was developed by Henry Claman, who had planned to build a movie theater there before deciding to construct a hotel for single men. The hotel was completed in April 1923 as the Claman Hotel and was sold less than a year later to Manger Hotels, who changed the name to the Times Square Hotel. The Manger family sold the Times Square Hotel in 1931, and the grill room became a popular venue for musical performances in the 1940s. The hotel was sold again in 1956, and a partnership headed by Arthur Schwebel leased it in 1962, renovating it into the Times Square Motor Hotel. The hotel was rundown by the 1980s, and nonprofit organization Covenant House bought the hotel in 1984, converting three stories into corporate offices and operating the other stories as a single room occupancy facility. The hotel was sold again in 1987, but the owners soon went into bankruptcy protection, and Tran Dinh Truong took over in 1988. The building was used to shelter homeless families while continuing to deteriorate. Common Ground acquired the hotel in 1991 and renovated it over the next three years.
(read more...)National Park Service documentation: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75319987