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Even for the "new" Times Square, where McDonald's boasts exposed brick walls and what now passes for a peep show is a glassed-in, street-level TV studio, the new 863-room Westin New York opening today on 43rd Street and Eighth Avenue will almost certainly cause passersby to do a double-take.
Some may think the $300-million hotel is the ugliest structure, others the most eclectic or just the funkiest new addition to an altered old neighborhood. Already, the New Yorker's architectural critic, Paul Goldberger, panned the luxury, 45-story hotel for making Times Square "vulgar in a whole new way."
Its multicolored exterior and modernly minimalist interior, together with a cube-like section that hangs above the E-walk movie and shopping arcade complex, has inspired both supporters and detractors to say the Westin New York successfully blurs architecture and entertainment.
"In this case, the market has asked for all this gaudy, eclectic stuff on 42nd Street," said Lynne B. Sagalyn, a professor of business administration at Columbia University, and the author of "Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon" (MIT Press). "Are they supposed to build a hotel like what you have on Park Avenue?"
Certainly,...