>> Frankfurt Skyline Countdown # 13 <<
If you ask some local person how to get to the Westend Gate, formerly called the Plaza Büro Center, they probably won’t know what you’re talking about. We all just call it the Marriott, which is no wonder since the word Marriott lights up the nighttime sky in big red letters at the top of the building.
Adagio and Marriott hotel entrances
It turns out, though, that the Marriott Hotel is only one of several tenants. The building was completed in 1976, but the Marriott didn’t move in until 1989. They now have 588 hotel rooms on levels 26 to 44, plus an entrance lobby on the ground floor, a ballroom on the first floor and conference rooms on the fifth floor.
In 2016 a second hotel, the Adagio Aparthotel, moved in and now has 172 furnished and fully equipped apartments for rent, by the month, in the lower floors 4 to 10. The two hotels have separate entrances.
In addition to the hotels, there are several floors of offices.
Marriott from the Book Fair, 2004
The building is 159.3 meters tall, which makes it Frankfurt’s thirteenth tallest building. It is located at Hamburger Allee 2-10 just across the street from the Fairgrounds (Messe), which in pre-Covid years made it possible for the Marriott to jack up its prices considerably during the Frankfurt Book Fair each October.
Marriott aka Plaza Büro Center aka Westend Gate
In 2011 the building was sold to an American-based private equity group called RFR for 144 million Euros, which was actually quite a bargain since the building had been valued at 243 million a mere two years earlier.
My photos in this post are from 2004, 2005 and 2020. I revised the text in 2020.