Excavation for Extell’s 32 West 48th Street Underway in Midtown, Manhattan

32 West 48th Street. Designed by SLCE Architects

Excavation is progressing at 32 West 48th Street, the site of a 31-story hotel tower in Midtown, Manhattan’s Diamond District. Designed by SLCE Architects and developed by Extell, the 456-foot-tall structure will yield 213,158 square feet and 534 hotel rooms. N47 Associates LLC is stated as the owner and AECOM Tishman is the general contractor for the project, which is located between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, directly south of the Rockefeller Center complex. Ancora Engineering was the engineer of record for the previous demolition and current excavation.

YIMBY first covered the development in November 2020, when permits were filed for the building’s construction. At that time, demolition of the two low-rise former occupants of the site had already been completed. New photographs show excavators working around the southern edge of the property along West 47th Street and gradually proceeding north toward West 48th Street. Fragments of the old steel superstructure can be seen scattered among the leftover rubble. This will be extracted from the ground as excavation progresses, and foundations should likely commence later this spring.

32 West 48th Street. Photo by Michael Young

32 West 48th Street. Photo by Michael Young

32 West 48th Street. Photo by Michael Young

The new hotel development will contain 168,897 square feet designated for commercial use, with each guest room expected to measure around 316 square feet. There will also be a cellar and sub-cellar below street level. The main rendering depicts a fairly orthodox-shaped tower set back from a multi-story podium, and a minor cantilever on the western elevation. The building is shown clad in a glass curtain wall with a mixture of light and dark mullions with varying horizontal and vertical emphasis. Guests with rooms on the upper floors will likely have views of the Rockefeller Center to the north, as well as views of the Empire State Building and Extell’s 590-foot-tall International Gem Tower to the south.

The project is located half a block east of the 47-50 Streets-Rockefeller Center subway station, serviced by the B, D, F, and M trains.

A completion date has been posted on site for September 2024.

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16 Comments on "Excavation for Extell’s 32 West 48th Street Underway in Midtown, Manhattan"

  1. David : Sent From Heaven. | January 21, 2022 at 8:17 am | Reply

    Next step from excavation, need to provide its work on progress. Along the structure’s design by plan, and a rendering would support all words; call for beautiful creating: Thanks to Michael Young.

  2. When I saw the rendering, first thought was “looks like an SLCE special”. And then… yup.

  3. They will need to clean up all the sleezy businesses in the area.

  4. Thats some weird graffiti as graffiti goes.

  5. A setback AND a cantilever…yessssssss

    • Actually the base and setback on this one doesn’t bother me AS MUCH with the old flanking low-rises making the context slightly less absurd.

  6. David in Bushwick | January 21, 2022 at 11:05 am | Reply

    Does anyone know if there was a building code change to explain the sudden huge growth of new hotels in this area?

  7. what a disaster.
    Another out of context glass cube bookended by century old low rise buildings.
    Greed Greed Greedy Gary barnett.
    How much money does one person need to stop the destruction of NYC

  8. Actually, looking at this rendering, this looks like an extravagant mysterious outsize object kept perplexingly in a cubbard or a closet. The sense of surprise and of unexplained bizarreness on discovering it ‘hidden in there’ printing the thoughts: what’s this! Where did it come from! What is it! Who put this in here! Not altogether a ‘bad’ discovery perhaps rewarded by the sudden and unexplained contact with strangeness. The purview of the ‘collector’s’ cabinet.
    And certainly, better in the cabinet awaiting discovery than arbitrarily ‘brought out’ and posed in wordless affront, say, at one of the chairs around a congenial dinner party. Not great conversation for whoever might be sitting adjacent. “Surreal”?

  9. Spellcheck correction: That’s ‘prompting’— not ‘printing’

  10. Just imagine lounging in the front lobby, with the smells of Five Guys fries and Chinese stir fry waifing through every time the glass door opens?! 😋🤣

  11. I quite like the design. It’s gentle yet sleek.

    • When saying something is blank yet blank it’s best if the preceding and following adjectives be relative opposites. What does ‘gentle yet sleek’ mean? I’m genuinely curious.

  12. For FR, I took one of these out of my closet and placed it on the table @ a dinner party. Nobody said anything.

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