Creation
The hotel was born in controversy because five historic theaters—the Helen Hayes, the Morosco, the Astor, the Bijou, and the Gaiety—were demolished to clear the site. Protesters, including Christopher Reeve (then at the height of his Superman fame) tried to stop the destruction, even forcing a Supreme Court challenge, but it was too late. What was dubbed "The Great Theater Massacre of 1982" went forward to make way for the hotel. By the time construction began, original operators Western International Hotels (today Westin) had dropped out of the project and Marriott had stepped in.
The hotel has been criticized for turning its back to Times Square. However, at the time the hotel was built, Times Square was only beginning to turn around. With the still-seedy character of Times Square, Portman's style of inwardly-oriented spaces made logical sense. The present redevelopment of Times Square as an urban destination point has left the Marriott Marquis detached from the street. However, the Marriott was the first major project in the Times Square revitalization, and has been credited as the starting point for today's development node at Times Square.
The hotel has 36 guest room floors and features an award-winning restaurant on the top floor called "The View".
The hotel is served by twelve scenic elevators, which are famous for facing into an atrium that stretches the height of the hotel. The cabs travel at 1,000 feet (300 m) per minute. They received a major modernization in 2005 that included replacing the cabs and reducing waiting times from originally more than 30 minutes in the past down to less than 5 minutes. Currently, the building boasts Schindler Group's Miconic 10 destination dispatch computer technology, which allows people to key in their destination floor number on a keypad and get assigned an elevator to use afterward. The cab interior still contains a floor button panel, but it is designed for firefighter use and is hidden under a locked panel.The elevators are also useful because they have handicapped mode. What that does is before the person enters their destination they will have to press the wheelchair button then the destination. Then the system will talk and a sound signal will come out of a speaker next to the car announcing the name of the car. For example the person enters their destination and then the system would say "Doors open Car A." It would also say "Doors closing."
At the time the hotel was built, it featured Manhattan's largest grand ballroom and its first revolving restaurant, a three-story, 1,500-seat theater, a second and third ballroom, and 100,000 square feet (9,300 m2) of meeting, banquet and exhibition spaces.
Read more about this topic: New York Marriott Marquis
Famous quotes containing the word creation:
“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded in the first man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Like witches they flew along rows
Keeping creation at ease;
With a tendril for needle
They sewed up the air with a stem;”
—Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)
“Since we are assured that the all-wise Creator has observed the most exact proportions of number, weight and measure in the make of all things, the most likely way therefore to get any insight into the nature of those parts of the Creation which come within our observation must in all reason be to number, weigh and measure.”
—Stephen Hales (1677–1761)