Small Times Square Building To Be Torn Down For Hotel, Plans Show

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — A small building that has stood steps from Times Square for nearly a century will be torn down to make way for a 32-story hotel, according to plans filed with the city.

The four-story building at 711 Seventh Ave., near West 47th Street, was built in 1925. Covered in billboards like most of its neighbors, it currently houses LoL Times Square Comedy Club and a row of gift shops.

Decades ago, however, the ground floor was home to Marco Polo's Restaurant, while a staircase inside led to Honeymoon Lane Dance Land: an "apparently popular taxi-dance ballroom," as documented by Untapped Cities in 2017.

Despite its popularity, those good times came to an end in 1964, when the city refused to renew Honeymoon Lane's license in a crackdown on Times Square dance halls that were used for "immoral, lewd and obscene purposes," the New York Times reported at the time.

The city's license commissioner, Bernard J. O'Connell, said Honeymoon Lane and its fellow halls were "frequented by male patrons in search of sexual experiences and adventures with hostesses," and were all co-owned by the same family.

On Wednesday, the developer Atlas Hospitality filed plans with the city to demolish the building.

In its place, they plan to build a 32-story, 375-foot-tall hotel containing 401 guest rooms, according to separate plans. The development will break ground in January and be completed by 2025 — signaling a bet that the city's hotel industry will rebound from the pandemic, as Crain's reported earlier this summer.

The prospect of another illicit dance hall moving into the new hotel appears unlikely.