According to Wikipedia:

The former Bertelsmann Building, now known as 1540 Broadway, is a 44-story, 733 foot (223 m) office tower in Times Square in Manhattan, New York City, standing at West 45th Street. The building was the North American headquarters of media conglomerate Bertelsmann from 1992 until the company vacated and sold the property, of which they occupied all office-use floors, in 2004. The building housed US satellites of central functions such as Corporate Development, Corporate Communications and the Office of the Chairman and CEO, as well as serving as worldwide headquarters for the Bertelsmann Music Group and Bertelsmann Book Group (what has later taken on the umbrella brand name Random House). Today’s office tenants include Viacom, China Central Television, Yahoo, KEMP Technologies, Adobe and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. The building retained the Bertelsmann name and signage facing Broadway until its eventual removal in late 2013.

Started in 1989 and finished in 1990, the tower is one of the few in Times Square to contain class A office space. Also found in the tower is Planet Hollywood, and commercial tenants MAC Cosmetics, Disney Store, and Forever 21.

In the 1990s the Bertelsmann subsidiary Random House looked to build a skyscraper across 45th Street from its parent and be connected to it via a neon-lighted bridge across 45th Street. When the deal fell through it built the Random House Tower 10 blocks uptown.

Loew’s State Theatre (1921) formerly occupied the site of the Bertelsmann Building. Before Loew’s, the Bartholdi Inn (1899), then New York’s best-known theatrical boarding house, was located there.

According to Anthony Slide’s History of Vaudeville:

The last major theatrical boarding house in New York was the Bartholdi Inn, which was opened in 1899 by Mme. Bartholdi on two upper floors of the building at 1546 Broadway, the ground floor of which was occupied by Child’s Restaurant. When Bartholdi became ill, the establishment was taken over by her daughter Polly and by 1906, it had expanded to one hundred rooms on the upper floors of three buildings at West 45th Street and Broadway. Among the Bartholdi Inn’s tenants were Pearl White, D.W. Griffith, Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin, Eva Tanguay, Nat Wills, and the chorus girls from the Ziegfeld Follies. It as here also the the first motion picture fraternal organization, the Screen Club, was founded on Labor Day 1912.

The establishment closed on February 1, 1920, shortly before the buildings which it occupied were demolished to make way for the new State Theatre. The inn’s furnishings were auctioned off on February 4, 1920. At its passing, Variety commented, “When the Bartholdi Inn passes into oblivion there will never be another like it. The day of the intimate theatrical boarding house in New York is gone forever, the numerous hotels in the theatrical district supplying everything the Inn could supply perhaps better – but without the spirit of comradeship”.

Taken with a Sony RX-100 M3.

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