Hilton New York Times Square Hotel (New York City, New York)

 hotel, skyscraper

www.hilton.com/en/hotels/nyctshh-hilton-times-square/

475-foot, 44-story postmodern hotel opened in 2000. Designed by Beyer Blinder Belle, the hotel is incorporated into a retail and entertainment complex, including Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, Ripley's Believe It Or Not, and on the west end, a 25-screen AMC movie theater, whose main entrance is through the facade of the historic Empire Theater, which was moved 170 feet to the west and restored for the project. The hotel has a modernist facade of geometric shapes in primary colors inspired by the artist Piet Mondrian's painting "Broadway Boogie-Woogie".

Specialized retail tenants occupy the first, second and ground levels of the building, and a street level lobby features shuttle elevators that bring guests to a “sky lobby.” At the east side of the base there is a large, multi-story signboard angling out from the facade; it is surrounded by a grey metal frame resembling pegboard. The three floors below it are occupied by a Dave & Buster's restaurant, and an Applebee's restaurant, with various large signage and colorful gridwork over the windows in yellow, red, and blue. The west half of the base has more colored metal gridwork and signage, for a money exchange store, NY Gifts, and It's Sugar. As the signboards give away above the lower floors, the facade's grid of floor-to-ceiling windows and red metal framing becomes more visible. There are projecting red girder-like elements at the top of the 8th floor, and running vertically up the west edge. The base sets back above the 8th floor, with another setback above the 14th floor to the main tower, which is oriented toward the south half of the site.

The upper tower of the hotel is windowless on the west facade, painted green, with a checkerboard section at the middle floors of lighter green and small white squares at the grid intersections. The main, north- and south-facing facades are ten bays wide, in a variety of colors. On each, the three west bays are divided by vertical white bands, with red spandrels in the middle of these three bays, and blue spandrels at the outer ones. The bay to the east of these is painted dark-green and has smaller single-windows; it separates the three bays on the west from the five bays at the east, which have alternating piers of grey-green and sea-foam green at the lower floors, and pink piers across the top six floors. The spandrels at these eastern bays are in yellow, white, and red Mondrian-like patterns on the lower floors, and red and pink on the top six floors. The narrow green bay extends up above the other bays, and there is grey metal screening, some angled, for the rooftop mechanical equipment. The east facade has a light-green bay of windows at both ends, with red spandrels, and a projecting center section painted darker green, with a single bay of windows with red spandrels.

On 41st Street, the lower floors of the south facade (up to the 14th-floor setback) incorporate the red-brick rear facade of the older theater structure that formerly occupied the site. Five bays wide, it has a raised loading dock with green wooden doors in the middle bay, and recessed segmental-arched niches on either side, one with a smaller green wooden door, and one filled with brick. Lamp globe are attached to the piers between each bay. The piers rise to round-arches at the 5th-floor level, with an arcade of blind segmental-arches above that. The rest of the rear facade above this section, as well as a narrow strip at the east end, is clad in newer brick, up the the 14th-floor setback. To the west of the old brick facade there is metal cladding above a second entrance to the hotel on the right, and a freight entrance on the left. The hotel entrance was remodeled in 2014 with recessed glass doors flanked by green-tinted translucent glass panels. At the far east end of the south facade is another bay of grey metal panels, these arranged in a grid pattern above a pre-cast concrete ground floor with a service entrance. The hotel has 478 guest rooms.