Knickerbocker Hotel building selling

The Post reports that Dubai’s Nakheel Hotels is in contract to sell the old Knickerbocker Hotel building and an adjacent development site on 42nd Street. Nakheel had planned to convert the Beaux-Arts-style 6 Times Square building back to the Knickerbocker Hotel, which was one of Midtown’s most luxurious hotels when it opened in 1905. The martini was supposedly named for its bartender, Martini di Arma di Taggia. Enrico Caruso, the world’s most famous opera singer, lived there until he died in 1921, the year the Astors closed the hotel and turned it into an office building. The building, which is home to textile showrooms and apartments, is sometimes called the Newsweek building, because the magazine was there from 1940 and 1959. The hotel sold for $300 million back in 2006. The name of the new buyer and the sale price were not reported. The buyer could decide to use the conversion plans drawn up by architects Brennan Beer Gorman. TRD