New York Marriott Marquis Hotel
New York Marriott
Marquis is a Marriott International hotel at 1535 Broadway opened in
1985 and was designed by architect John Portman. It is located on Times Square
at Broadway and 45th Street. The hotel is famous for its high-tech elevators and
atrium lobby rising 45 stories to "The View", New York's only rooftop revolving
restaurant and lounge. With 1,949 rooms and over 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m2) of meeting space, it is one of the
largest hotels in the city. The Marquis Theatre is located within the hotel at
the 3rd floor level.
Creation
The
hotel was born in controversy because five historic theaters—the Helen Hayes,
the Morosco, the Astor, the Bijou, and the Gaiety—were demolished to clear the
site. Protesters, including Christopher Reeve (then at the height of his
Superman fame) tried to stop the destruction, even forcing a Supreme Court
challenge, but it was too late. What was dubbed "The Great Theater Massacre of
1982" went forward to make way for the hotel. By the time construction began,
original operators Western International Hotels (today Westin) had dropped out
of the project and Marriott had stepped in.
The hotel has been criticized
for turning its back to Times Square. However, at the time the hotel was built,
Times Square was only beginning to turn around. With the still-seedy character
of Times Square, Portman's style of inwardly-oriented spaces made logical sense.
The present redevelopment of Times Square as an urban destination point has left
the Marriott Marquis detached from the street. However, the Marriott was the
first major project in the Times Square revitalization, and has been credited as
the starting point for today's development node at Times Square.
The hotel has 36 guest room
floors and features an award-winning restaurant on the top floor called "The
View".
The hotel is served by twelve
scenic elevators, which are famous for facing into an atrium that stretches the
height of the hotel. The cabs travel at 1,000 feet (300 m) per minute. They
received a major modernization in 2005 that included replacing the cabs and
reducing waiting times from originally more than 30 minutes in the past down to less than 5 minutes. Currently,
the building boasts Schindler Group's Miconic 10 destination dispatch computer
technology, which allows people to key in their destination floor number on a
keypad and get assigned an elevator to use afterward. The cab interior still
contains a floor button panel, but it is designed for firefighter use and is
hidden under a locked panel.The elevators are also useful because they have
handicapped mode. What that does is before the person enters their destination
they will have to press the wheelchair button then the destination. Then the
system will talk and a sound signal will come out of a speaker next to the car
announcing the name of the car. For example the person enters their destination
and then the system would say "Doors open Car A." It would also say "Doors
closing."
At the time the hotel was
built, it featured Manhattan's largest grand ballroom and its first revolving
restaurant, a three-story, 1,500-seat theater, a second and third ballroom, and
100,000 square feet (9,300 m2) of
meeting, banquet and exhibition spaces.
