Design: The hotel was built with a two story podium originally containing the lobby five restaurants ten ballrooms and a large convention hall and an acre of kitchens with the hotel rooms in narrow slabs above. To achieve this Lapidus employed three structural systems Floors 1 through 5 are steel concrete composite columns floors 5 through 29 are concrete shear walls and 29 to 51 reinforced concrete columns. At the time of its completion the building was the tallest concrete framed structure in the city. The main block of accommodation is a tall thin bent slab form angled towards the 52nd Street corner emphasized by the horizontal striped facade of strip windows and yellow glazed brick spandrels. On the north side facing Sixth Avenue a lower 25 story wing is placed at right angles to the street and inclides the entrance and lobby in a two story podium.
The dominant feature at ground level is the two story circular rouunda projecting fromundrt the end of the bent wing on the 52nd street corner. An image of the hotel in the 1960s can be founf in the collection of the Museum of thr City of New York here. The sidewalk on all dides originally had striped paving at the slight angle of the entry and bent wing effectively turning the Seventh Avenue sidewalk into a forecourt for the hotel.
The facades of the accommodation blocks are generally intact but podium levels were reclad in the 1991 renovation replacing the varied light 1960s details with Postmodern sQuared granite.
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