1540 Broadway, formerly the Bertelsmann Building, is a 44-story office building on Times Square in the Theater District neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the building was developed by Broadway State Partners, a joint venture between Bruce Eichner and VMS Development. 1540 Broadway occupies a site bounded by Broadway to the west, 45th Street to the south, and 46th Street to the north. It was originally named for its anchor tenant, German media company Bertelsmann. The building is divided into two ownership units: HSBC and Edge Funds Advisors own the office stories, while Vornado Realty Trust owns retail space at the base.
1540 Broadway consists of a low base, as well as a tower section measuring to its spire. An outwardly projecting "prow" extends from the western side of the building. The facade is designed with large signs at the base, with a main office entrance on 45th Street. The upper stories contain a facade of blue and green glass with vertical aluminum mullions. There is a public passageway and about of retail space at the base; the retail space was originally supposed to be part of a five-story shopping mall that was never opened. The basement formerly contained a four-screen movie theater, while the upper stories contain of offices.
Broadway State Partners had developed 1540 Broadway on the site of Loew's State Theatre and several other buildings. Helmut Jahn initially proposed a mixed-use office, hotel, and commercial building on the site, though Childs subsequently drew up plans for an office building with retail at its base. Work started in 1988 and the building was completed in 1990, but it was completely empty for the next three years. Bertelsmann bought the building out of bankruptcy in 1992 and moved its headquarters there, opening several retail stores in the late 1990s. The Paramount Group bought the building in 2004, reselling the offices two years later to Equity Office Properties and the stores to Vornado. The offices were subsequently resold to Harry B. Macklowe in 2007, Deutsche Bank in 2008, and CBRE Group in 2009; HSBC and Edge acquired the offices in a two-part sale in 2010 and 2011.
Site 1540 Broadway is on the east side of Broadway, along Times Square between 45th Street (George Abbott Way) to the south and 46th Street to the north, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. The irregularly shaped land lot covers , with a frontage of on Broadway and a depth of . The building wraps around another structure at the northwest corner, and the section of the building on 46th Street extends further east than the portion on 45th Street. The northern end of the building faces Duffy Square.
The surrounding area is part of Manhattan's Theater District and contains many Broadway theaters. On the same block are the Lyceum Theatre, the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School for International Careers, and Americas Tower to the east. Other nearby buildings include the Hotel Edison and Lunt-Fontanne Theatre to the northwest; TSX Broadway, the Palace and Embassy Theatres, and the I. Miller Building to the north; 1530 Broadway, the Hudson Theatre, and the Millennium Times Square New York hotel to the south; One Astor Plaza to the southwest; and the New York Marriott Marquis hotel to the west.
The site formerly contained Loew's State Theatre, built in 1921 at the address 1540 Broadway. Loew's State Theatre had been housed within a 17-story office building prior to its demolition in 1987. The old theater's design had complemented that of the Lyceum Theatre, a Broadway theater, immediately to the east. The site had also contained several smaller buildings, including a United Service Organizations (USO) recruitment center.
Architecture 1540 Broadway was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), with David Childs of SOM as the project's partner-in-charge. It was developed by Bruce Eichner of Eichner Properties in collaboration with Chicago-based firm VMS Development. The building has 42 stories and four basements. It measures to its spire. The top floor is high, while the roof is high. German entertainment conglomerate Bertelsmann originally occupied most of the space.
Form and facade
1540 Broadway's base measures either or tall. above which are multiple setbacks. The building's massing contains a prow-shaped projection on its western end, facing Broadway. Though this prow was initially planned as a sign across a small section of the building, it ultimately was installed along the building's full height. The concept for a prow-shaped sign was then changed to a skeletal metal framework, then to usable office space. At the top of the prow is a metal spire with a frame, which extends or high. The spire was influenced by deconstructivist motifs, which led Childs to remark, "We've pinned the bow tie!", a reference to the building's location near the center of the bowtie-shaped Times Square. The skeletal frame's design also evoked the framework of the large billboards on Times Square.
The building's facade was originally planned to contain of electronic signs, consisting of of three-dimensional signs and of flat signs. As built, the base of the building contained of signage, as well as a electronic sign at the middle of the atrium. When the building opened, it had a Qlinn display on one of its setbacks; the display included 84,000 rotating cubes with red, green, white, and blue faces. Early plans for the building had called for a large clock to be mounted on the base. In 2013, a LED sign measuring was mounted on the building.
The main entrance to the upper-story offices and the building's ground-floor pedestrian arcade is on 45th Street, where a silver canopy spans three bays. The westernmost bay leads to the pedestrian arcade, while the center bay leads to the office lobby. The top of the main entrance is aligned with the cornice of the neighboring Lyceum Theatre. Originally, there was a large entrance on Broadway for a shopping mall.
According to Childs, the building's upper stories were intended to appear "bright and brassy" from Broadway, while the 45th and 46th Street facades were intended to give a more muted, corporate appearance. The facade is primarily made of glass with vertical aluminum mullions. The tower section's primary facade is made of blue glass, containing mullions that are flush with the surface of the facade. On 46th Street, the tower is largely faced in green glass, with silver mullions and horizontal white spandrels. The green-glass section on 46th Street rises 25 stories before setting back into the main blue-glass section. The blue-glass facade also contains several rectangular sections of green-glass cladding, which are recessed within the main blue-glass wall.
Features
Base
A pedestrian arcade between 46th and 45th Streets is included in 1540 Broadway's base. It was built as a "through-block connection" under the Special Midtown District, created in 1982. The passageway is east of Broadway and has of floor area. The arcade contains display cases and storefronts on the western wall, while its northern end is outdoors and under a canopy. The arcade is directly across from the Millennium Times Square's passageway to the south. Next to the arcade is the office lobby, decorated in green and gray marble. When Bertelsmann owned the building, the lobby contained a etched-glass triptych of Elvis Presley, a copy of a larger triptych that Bertelsmann subsidiary RCA Records had donated to Presley's Graceland mansion. BNK Architects also designed a multimedia display for Bertelsmann in the lobby.
The base contained a retail atrium covering , including of storefronts. The space connected to the through-block pedestrian passageway. The space was originally planned as a six-level mall, which never opened due to financial shortfalls. Had the mall opened as intended, there would have been as many as 50 stores, including a Musicland store. There would have been restaurants on the two highest levels, as well as boutiques and shops on the three levels beneath. The interior of the mall would have contained a semicircular wall with an electronic sign measuring wide and high. In the basement was to be a parking lot, as well as a movie theater. The shopping mall was designed with deconstructive motifs as well. These included square pillars, which changed to round columns on upper levels; escalators with glass panels, showing the interior machinery; and a kiosk that appeared as a stainless-steel core from some angles.
The retail space was ultimately occupied by a Virgin Megastore from 1996 to 2009. designed by Bibliowicz Nelligan Kriegel. The store occupied four levels, with a book department in the second basement; jazz and classical departments in the first basement; rock, R&B, and Virgin merchandise on the first floor; and a cafe on the mezzanine. A Virgin Atlantic airline ticket booth abutted the store. Another on the first, second, and third floors were taken up by the Official All Star Café, which had 650 seats plus a 250-seat bar; the restaurant served "arena food". The basement movie theater, operated by Sony Loews from 1996 to 2006, had four screens and could fit 1,400 people. A Disney Store opened within the former Virgin Megastore space in 2010, along with a Forever 21 spanning four levels. The tenants in the retail space include Disney, Forever 21, and Sunglass Hut.
Offices The building was also planned with of office space. The lower stories are designed with floor areas of each, while the tower floors are as small as . Swanke Hayden Connell Architects designed the interiors of the Bertelsmann offices. Each of Bertelsmann's musical divisions was situated on a floor with a design ranging "from hip to sedate". The distance between each story's floor slab is . Additionally, space on two floors was set aside as an "incubator" for foreign companies wishing to start up in New York City.
In 2009, then-owner CBRE Group converted the eighth floor into a tenant amenity space with a conference center, concierge, catering, and fitness room. The amenity floor is hidden behind some of the exterior trusses and signs on Times Square. Further improvements were made to the amenity floor in 2019, when Gensler remodeled it. The renovated amenity floor includes a fitness center, barista, small food hall, tenant lounge, and three meeting rooms. The amenity floor is called Stage 8 and contains design motifs and a color scheme that are intended to recall the Broadway theaters nearby.
History Times Square's Theater District had evolved into a business district after World War II. Nonetheless, there were relatively few large developments there in the mid-20th century. Between 1958 and 1983, only twelve buildings with at least of space were developed in the 114-block area between Sixth Avenue, Times Square, Eighth Avenue, and Columbus Circle. 1540 Broadway was proposed in the 1980s, when there was high demand for office space in New York City. At the time, Bruce Eichner had gained experience developing brownstone residences, condominium apartments, and the mixed-use CitySpire skyscraper. 1540 Broadway itself was constructed by Broadway State Partners, a joint venture between Eichner and VMS Development, which was formed specifically to develop that building.
Development
Planning