The BT Tower, a Once-Futuristic London Landmark, Will Become a Hotel

St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London and the London Eye are all important landmarks in Britain’s capital. Yet you can’t spend the night in any of them.

But after another staple of the city’s skyline, the BT Tower, was sold to an American group on Wednesday, plans are afoot to turn it into a hotel: one that rises 581 feet (177 meters) above the ground.

“We will take our time to carefully develop proposals that respect the London landmark’s rich history and open the building for everyone to enjoy,” Tyler Morse, the chief executive of MCR Hotels, which bought the tower, said in a statement. The sale price was 275 million pounds ($346 million), the seller, BT Group, said in a statement.

MCR owns several notable hotels, including the TWA Hotel, which occupies the Eero Saarinen-designed former TWA terminal at Kennedy Airport, and the High Line Hotel in New York City, which was formerly a dormitory for the General Theological Seminary.

“We see many parallels between the TWA Hotel and the BT Tower,” Mr. Morse said. “Both are world-renowned, groundbreaking pieces of architecture.”