The 81-year-old Paramount Hotel, a 567-room Renaissance Revival building near Times Square, is on track to become a city landmark. The hotel has been listed on the agenda of tomorrow’s Landmarks Preservation Commission meeting, as has 46 West 55th Street, a brick and limestone townhouse a block north of the Museum of Modern Art. The buildings were “calendared,” which typically means they will eventually be designated as landmarks by the city agency, placing significant restrictions on any renovations or alterations to the facade.
The Paramount, an 18-story mid-block building at 235 West 46th Street, was one of boutique hotelier Ian Schrager’s early hotel projects, as he revamped the building with a classy new lobby in 1990. Since then, it traded hands to Becker Ventures and then to, per city records, a group that includes Westbrook Partners, for $152 million in 2007. Under Becker’s ownership, it was slated to be a Hard Rock Hotel, but those plans apparently fizzled.
As for 46 West 55th Street, the five-story rowhouse was built in 1869, though its distinctive curved facade was put in place later, in 1903, designed by architect Edward L. Tilton. Per the LPC’s summary of the building, the renovation adorned the building “with an elegant bowed front, ground-level entry, and impressive modillioned and bracketed cornice.”
