1500 Broadway

1500 Broadway (also known as Times Square Plaza) is an office building on Times Square in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York. Completed in 1972 by Arlen Realty & Development Corporation, the 33-story building is 392 feet (119 meters) tall. The building replaced the Hotel Claridge and occupies an entire block front on the east side of Broadway between 43rd Street and 44th Street.

The facade is made of bronze aluminum and contains tinted-glass windows. The lowest four stories of the facade were renovated in the late 1980s, and there is also a pair of curving news tickers and a billboard at the lower part of the building's facade. The building contains about 460,000 square feet (43,000 m²) of space. At ground level, there was originally an arcade, lobby, two foyers, and a movie theater; in addition, Times Square Studios and ABC Studios occupy space on the lower stories.

The New York City Board of Estimate approved a zoning regulation encouraging the construction of theaters in new office buildings near Times Square. Subsequently, National General Pictures announced plans in January 1970 for a skyscraper with movie theaters, and Arlen Realty was hired as the building's developer. The building's cinema opened December 12, 1972, and the first office leases were signed in March 1974. The structure was almost completely vacant when it opened, and it did not approach full occupancy until the mid-1980s. The structure was sold in 1988 to the 1500 Realty Company, and it was resold in 1995 to a partnership that included Tamares Group.

1500 Broadway is on the eastern side of Times Square, between 43rd and 44th Streets in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. While the building carries a Broadway address, it is actually on the east side of Seventh Avenue. The section of Broadway and Seventh Avenue between 43rd and 45th Streets is officially listed on city maps as "Times Square", but the adjoining section of Broadway was converted into a permanent pedestrian plaza in the 2010s. 1500 Broadway's rectangular land lot is bounded by Times Square to the west, 44th Street to the north, and 43rd Street to the south. The lot spans 25,569 square feet (2,375.4 m²), with a frontage of 203.77 feet (62.11 m) on Broadway and a depth of 125 feet (38 m).

The surrounding area is part of Manhattan's Theater District and contains many Broadway theatres. 1500 Broadway shares the block with the Lambs Club Building and the Town Hall performing-arts center to the east. The Bow Tie Building, Millennium Times Square New York hotel, the Hudson Theatre, the aka Times Square, and the Belasco Theatre are across 44th Street to the north, and 4 Times Square, the Bank of America Tower, and the Stephen Sondheim Theatre are across 43rd Street to the south. The building is also near One Times Square and 3 Times Square to the southwest, 1501 Broadway to the west, and One Astor Plaza to the northwest.

Prior to the development of the current 1500 Broadway, the southeast corner of Broadway and 44th Street was occupied by the Hotel Claridge, built in 1910 as the Rector Hotel. From 1941 to 1966, that building had contained a billboard advertising Camel cigarettes, which emitted steam jets. The northeast corner of Broadway and 43rd Street contained a two-story commercial structure at 1500–1504 Broadway, owned by the family of George Innes-Ker, 9th Duke of Roxburghe, from 1920 to 1963. The two-story structure, a shoe shop, itself replaced the Barrett House hotel, where playwright Eugene O'Neill was born.

The structure was built as a joint venture between Arlen Realty and Development Corporation and National General Corporation. It was designed by the firm of Leo Kornblath & Associates and is 33 stories high. The building contains 460,000 square feet (43,000 m²) of space, of which 360,000 square feet (33,000 m²) was rentable space.

The facade is made of bronze aluminum and contains tinted-glass windows. At ground level, there was originally an arcade with shops and a marquee on the Broadway side. The lobby, and two foyers for a movie theater on the second and third stories, were visible behind the marquee. The marquee measured 72 feet (22 m) long and 9 feet (2.7 m) high. The Artkraft-Strauss Corporation designed a series of vertical light tubes on the facade, which stretched from a third-floor chandelier outside the building, spanning the length of the marquee, to another third-floor chandelier. According to the movie theater's architect Drew Eberson, this was intended to give the impression that the theater was "opening its arms to Broadway".