NYC Marriott claims tallest hotel in North America

NEW YORK — A new Marriott in New York City is claiming to be the tallest single-use hotel building in North America.

The Courtyard-Residence Inn Central Park is 750 feet high, according to Marriott spokeswoman Nina Herrera-Davila.

The hotel opened Dec. 29 at 1717 Broadway at 54th Street. It’s 68 stories tall, with 378 rooms in the Courtyard hotel and 261 suites in the Residence Inn. The term single use means there are no private residences or offices in the building. Nightly rack rates will run around $300, Herrera-Davila said.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat in Illinois, which compiles lists of tall buildings, is listing the building as the tallest hotel in North America, with a Marriott in Detroit as second-tallest, Council spokesman Daniel Safarik said. The Detroit building is one of the towers in the city’s old Renaissance Center, Safarik said.

Tall and slender towers in the West 57th Street area of Manhattan are the subject of an exhibition currently on view at the Skyscraper Museum in Lower Manhattan called “Sky High.” Museum director Carol Willis said “the key feature of these buildings, as we illustrate in our exhibition, is their slenderness.”

Willis said a Four Seasons currently under construction in Lower Manhattan will be taller than the Marriott, but it will include condos and will therefore not be a single use hotel.