Meet the new Park Central: $60M reno embraces historic design

The Park Central in Midtown has a new, old  look. LaSalle Hotel Properties spent more than $60 million to update yet preserve the nearly 90-year-old high-rise.

Work on the hotel, at Seventh Avenue and 55th Street, took months, though it was business as usual for the place where the likes of Jackie Gleason and Eleanor Roosevelt stayed. Architecture firm Jeffrey Beers International led the redesign.

The remodeling shortened the lobby, putting the front desk in a more prominent spot, the New York Times reported. Upstairs, in the guest quarters, the bathrooms are now painted red, with porcelain tiles in a “piano-like pattern.” A new two-floor restaurant pays homage to the defunct Mermaid Room, which doubled as a nightclub. A cafe also will open soon.

The Park Central welcomed its first guests in 1927. Back then, the hotel had 1,600 rooms; today, the number stands at 761.

Last year, Bethesda, Md.-based real estate investment trust LaSalle Hotel Properties acquired the Park Central for $396.2 million, or about $425,000 per key, as previously reported. [NYT] — Mark Maurer