More resplendent now than when it disappeared four and a half years ago, the former Hotel Knickerbocker has emerged from a cocoon of scaffolding, netting and billboards to reclaim its place as the Beaux-Arts tiara of Times Square.
When scaffolding enveloped the 16-story landmark at Broadway and 42nd Street in March 1999, it was supposed to be only until the following year. But the complex job of restoring the facade ''grew threefold,'' said Gerard Nocera, executive vice president of S L Green Realty Corporation, which owns the building.
So ever since the end of the 20th century, the most architecturally exuberant corner of the Times Square crossroads had been encased in an exoskeleton covered with advertising for the Gap, Target and Apple.
In recent days, it finally came back to light: a vibrant facade of red brick alternating with quoin-edged bays of terra cotta and limestone ornament, some of it painstakingly reproduced in fiberglass-reinforced concrete, under a crested, three-story mansard roof, much of which has been replaced with copper that already has a verdigris patina.
''We watched the release of the Knickerbocker from her commercial corset with a mixture of excitement and anticipation,'' said Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Business Improvement District, employing a full measure of gilded-age hyperbole with a hint of Times Square naughtiness. ''And we are thrilled that she has now bared her beauty for all the world to see.''
Continue reading the main storyEven the normally understated Robert B. Tierney, chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, could not restrain himself yesterday when he heard the scaffolding had come down. ''That's spectacular,'' he said. ''I'm ecstatic.''
Speaking of the elaborate facade, James R. Pesci Jr., a vice president of S L Green, said: ''What you see is the jewelry. What you're not seeing is the skin and bones.'' By that, he meant the new air-conditioning, plumbing, electrical service and bathrooms, and the renovated lobby.
The Knickerbocker Hotel opened in 1906 and counted Enrico Caruso among its guests. (At the time, the Metropolitan Opera was only three blocks away.) It boasted of having two direct underground entrances to the new subway system.
These were closed long ago. The Knickerbocker failed as a hotel and in 1921 was turned into an office building. Now known as 1466 Broadway or 6 Times Square, it is largely inhabited by garment showrooms. There are also three floors of offices.
Some faint vestiges of Knickerbocker days remain. The elevator lobby has a rosette-studded vaulted ceiling that reproduces the original, parts of which were found above a dropped ceiling. In the basement and subbasement are bits of paneling and wainscoting, some hexagonal white tile, and a herringbone-pattern brick floor that may once have been part of the hotel's wine cellar.
The most tantalizing remnant, however, is not at 6 Times Square at all but in the Times Square subway station. Over a door at one end of the shuttle platform is a lintel inscribed simply, ''Knickerbocker.''
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