Millennium Times Square
133 West 44th Street | Times Square | built 1998
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1985
Developer Harry Macklowe has four buildings on the site demolished overnight
To get ahead of a pending moratorium on demolishing single-room-occupancy hotels, Macklowe paid a contractor $380,000 to tear down four structures at 143-149 West 44th Street on the night of January 7, 1985. The work was done without permits or disconnected utility lines. District Attorney Robert Morgenthau treated the missing disconnections as reckless endangerment, and Macklowe paid a $2 million fine that the city passed to the Franciscans for housing for the homeless.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1989
Comptroller Goldin orders an inquiry after council members say they did not know they lifted the Macklowe ban
In January 1989 the press reported that the City Council had quietly overturned the four-year ban on building at the 44th Street site two years early, and some members who voted for it said they had not realized it. Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin ordered an investigation, saying Macklowe had signed an agreement accepting the ban, and urged the city to issue a stop-work order on the hotel.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1990
Chess sells out the 700-seat Hudson Theatre, and the New York half of the world championship ends tied 6-6
The Hudson Theatre, which the hotel's conference center used as its auditorium, was sold out or nearly so for every game of the 1990 World Chess Championship, with tickets from $25 to $100. A large screen above the players flashed "Silence, Please!" at any murmur from the crowd, and roughly 500 reporters from across the globe covered the match. Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov moved on to Lyon, France, with the score level at 6-6.
Source: csmonitor.com
- 1990
The Hotel Macklowe opens in 1990 after a development ban is lifted early
A City Council ordinance had barred development of the site for four years, but the council quietly overturned it in January 1987, two years early. Macklowe paid the city $2.65 million later that year to finish clearing the Lenox Hotel site. The Hotel Macklowe opened in May 1990 with more than 600 rooms and a conference center that extended into the Hudson Theatre.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1994
Chemical Bank, which took the hotel from Macklowe, agrees to sell it to Singapore's CDL for about $100 million
When Harry Macklowe defaulted on the hotel's mortgage, Chemical Bank took the property in February 1994 and set out at once to sell. By September it had agreed to sell to Kwek Leng Beng of the Singaporean chain CDL International, for about $100 million, or nearly $164,000 per room. Conferences then brought in half of the hotel's revenue, and Kwek hired outside managers to run it.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1995
CDL International renames the hotel Millennium Broadway
After Macklowe defaulted on its mortgage, Chemical Bank took control of the hotel in February 1994, and it arranged to sell the property to CDL International that September for about $100 million. CDL renamed it the Millennium Broadway in October 1995. After buying the adjacent Newspaper Guild building, it opened the Millennium Premier annex in 1999.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1996
CDL buys the Newspaper Guild's three-story headquarters on the lot to make room for a hotel annex
Before the present annex, the site held the Newspaper Guild's three-story headquarters at 133 West 44th Street, which the union had occupied since 1946. In December 1996 CDL, the hotel's owner, acquired the building for $3.4 million, planning a 19-story annex of 130 rooms and offering $80,000 toward asbestos removal. The purchase was finalized in May 1997, when CDL said it would spend $28 million on the annex, about $230,000 a room.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1999
The 22-story Millennium Premier annex opens beside the Hudson Theatre behind a freestanding granite wall
The Millennium Premier annex opened in 1999 as a 22-story addition designed by Stonehill & Taylor with Kiat Supattapone. A wall of Deer Isle granite stands in front of the lower floors, built as a freestanding slab to echo the Hudson Theatre. The whole annex is set back from the lot line, which architect Paul David Taylor said avoided a low setback that zoning would otherwise have required.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2003
An appeals court overturns the city's refusal of a tax abatement for the Millennium Premier annex
CDL had asked for a tax abatement on the new annex, arguing that it belonged to the existing hotel because the two shared mechanical systems and were linked at several points through the Hudson Theatre. The city refused, conceding the annex was separate, and the state Supreme Court upheld that decision. On appeal in 2003 the ruling was reversed, and the city had to pay the abatement retroactively.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2017
The Hudson Theatre reopens as a Broadway venue
The Hudson Theatre had been folded into the hotel's conference center when the hotel opened in 1990. The Ambassador Theatre Group signed a lease with the hotel's operator in December 2015 to bring it back as a Broadway house, and it reopened in February 2017.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Millennium Times Square New YorkWikipedia
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