The 27-story condominium apartment building at 1600 Broadway at 48th Street has sold 80 percent of its 137 units in its first 90 days on the market.

"We have been overwhelmed with interest since day one," says Jeffrey Katz, chief executive officer of Sherwood Equities, the developer. "Buyers are amazed that they can purchase luxury homes with an incredible amenities package right in the heart of Times Square," he continued, adding that "International buyers and those from other parts of the country in particular have been extremely taken with the location, and are eager to buy their own piece of New York real estate."

Apartments have 9-1/2 foot high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, and washers and dryers and the kitchens have Golden Leaf granite countertops, full height sandblasted mirrored backsplashes, and contemporary Italian rift cut oak cabinetry, as well as premium Subzero, Miele, LG and Bosch stainless steel appliances.

The building will also have "Club on the Square," a fitness center, entertainment lounge with television, bar and billiards, a virtual golf amenity and a business center. It will also have a landscaped terrace on the fourth floor with trees, a putting green and rolling lawns and a rooftop "observatory" as well as a 24-hour attended lobby and private storage facilities.

The building is expected to be ready for occupancy this spring and prices for the remaining units range from $1,055,000 to $2,950,000 for a penthouse.

The 290-foot-high building has nine-story-high advertising signs that project like wings from the middle of the tower's south facade between Broadway and Seventh Avenue.

The building has a tower setback over a two-story-high base and the top five floors of the tower are angled outwards and the middle part of the east and west facades are also flare outwards. Some of the top floor balconies on the west facade are curved.

Sherwood Equities acquired the site in 1986, and it built the black-glass Renaissance Hotel that occupies much of the small block just to the south, at the north end of Times Square. Sherwood also owns a minority interest in 1 Times Square.

Jorge Szendiuch of Einhorn Yafee Prescot is the design architect and Cetra Ruddy and SLCE Architects are also involved and M. Paul Friedberg and Partners is the landscape architect.

The building replaced the former 10-story, Studebaker Brothers building that was erected in 1902 and designed by James Brown Lord, the architect of the Appellate Division of the State of New York building on Madison Square Park.

In a November 8, 2004 article in The New York Times, David Dunlap wrote that the handsome building was "one of New York's most familiar unknown buildings" as it was adorned with large advertising signs for Maxwell House, Chevrolet, Braniff and Sony.

"Columbia Pictures may be said to have been born there," Mr. Dunlap continued, "since it was in an office at 1600 Broadway that Harry Cohn, Joseph Brandt and Jack Cohn formed the C.B.C. Film Sales Company in 1920. Four years later, tired of the nickname 'Corned Beef and Cabbage,' they renamed the company Columbia. In the 1930s Joseph Hilton & Sons, a clothier, operated in the building and in 1939 the building, which had a large cornice, chamfered corners and large, arched windows on its 9th floor, was home to the Ripley Believe It or Not! Odditorium in 1939 and soon thereafter to Howard Clothes.