Cleanup on 42nd Street: Porn king’s estate to convert Times Square building into offices

Desks, desks, desks! The estate of deceased porn magnate Richard Basciano wants to swap out live nudes for clothed office workers at his infamous Times Square property.

Basciano’s estate filed plans for an office conversion at 303 West 42nd Street with the city’s Department of Buildings on Wednesday. The building would expand only from about 59,000 to 61,000 square feet under the plans, and remain 12 stories and 120 feet tall.

The building has been best-known for years as home to the sex shop Show World Center, one of the last remaining pornography businesses that survived the redevelopment of Times Square and the Giuliani administration’s crackdown on porn in the 1990s. The store currently occupies the bottom three floors and cellar of the building and was once described as the “flagship” of New York’s sex industry.

Representatives from Basciano’s estate did not respond to a request for comment.

Basciano died last year at age 91. He told Crain’s prior to his death that Show World was going to close, noting that it sits on extremely valuable real estate.