from the collection of the Frank M. Ingalls collection of the New-York Historical Society.
In May 1899, the architectural firm of Barney & Chapman filed plans for a "10-story brick hotel" at the southwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 38th Street. The project would cost developer Eliza White $300,000 to construct--nearly $11.5 million in 2024 terms.
Completed in 1900, the Hotel Navarre's tripartite, neo-French Renaissance design included a two-story base, rusticated mid-section, and a show-stopping two-story top section girded by a balustraded balcony. The arched entrance sat within a four-story frame elaborately decorated with carved caryatids and life-size reclining figures. The two-story mansard exploded in dormers crowned with tall, crocketed finials.
Life-size caryatids and sculptures graced the third, fourth and fifth floors over the entrance. photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York
The Hotel Navarre catered to both permanent and transient guests. According to an advertisement, the accommodations were laid out in "single rooms and family suites." In its October 1900 issue, The Hotel Monthly reported, "The three hundred and thirty five guest rooms are all furnished in a substantial and tasteful manner consistent with a first class hotel. The rooms are en suite and a noticeable feature is that there are 200 private baths, each with outside air."
The article noted, "There is a palm garden on the roof. A telephone is in every room." A single room and bath cost $2 per night (about $75 today). In addition to the palm garden, there were a Dutch Grill and "family dining rooms."
A series of mysterious thefts began in the spring of 1902. On May 26, The Evening World reported that to date guests had lost $1,000 in jewelry. Detectives thought they had traced the robberies to a servant, Kate Mackay, but when they raided her home at 318 East 37th Street, they found hotel linens valued at $10, but no trace of any jewelry.
Seven months later, the burglaries continued. On December 3, actor and song-writer William Jerome and his actress wife, Maud Nugent, were asleep in their fifth floor room. At some point Jerome "was awakened by a draft from the open window," as reported by The Evening World. He got up, closed the window, and went back to bed.
Dooley did not reawaken until 3:30 the following afternoon. He had a severe headache and nausea. His wife was still sound asleep, her breathing labored. The newspaper said, "he had difficulty in arousing her." An odor of chloroform in the room led to the couple's realizing that brazen burglars had held chloroform soaked rags over their faces while they slept. The bandits had made off with a $500 check, two gold watches and chains, and $50 in cash.
from the collection of the New-York Historical Society
Detectives concluded the robbery, like the others, had to be an inside job. They explained, "access to the fire-escape, by which Mr. Jerome's room was entered, could only have been made from the second story court." To get there, the thieves would have had to pass the hotel detective, the bellboy and the watchman.
As it turned out, the investigators were wrong. House Detective Thomas Maxwell and a night porter, William McNulty, set themselves up in a fifth-floor room overlooking the rear courtyard and waited. At 4:00 in the morning, four days after the Jerome robbery, Maxwell saw two men scale the fence surrounding the vacant lot on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 37th Street. They carried long planks. The Evening World reported that they clambered to the top of the two-story laundry portion of the hotel. From there, "they used another plank to reach the fire-escape, which extends up the twelve [sic] stories and communicates with the rooms of many patrons."
Maxwell waited as he watched the men go in and out of rooms on the third, fourth and fifth floors. Finally, when one exited a sixth floor window, Maxwell, "leaned out of his window and fired." A gun battle ensued, joined by a sixth-floor patron who "raised his window and commenced firing at the two negroes on the fire-escape." Then, according to The Evening World, "Others did the same, and for a few moments a brisk skirmish was maintained."
The Evening World, December 8, 1902 (copyright expired)
Against all odds, the robbers made it down the fire escape, across the plank, and over the fence. One of them, William Murray, was caught shortly afterward. "In one pocket was found a bottle containing chloroform and a rag which had been saturated with the drug," said the article.
On April 30, 1903, Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Walker took rooms here. They were, in fact, not husband and wife, but John B. Walker, a newspaper artist, and Claudia Guernsey. The two had met in March 1902. Claudia, described by The Evening World as "beautiful, attractive, a widow and wealthy," owned large amounts of Manhattan real estate, including the block of houses on Seventh Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets.
Shortly after the two met, they began living together. Walker left his wife and children, who lived at 9 East 22nd Street. Things were going smoothly for Walker and Guernsey until around May 6, 1903, when they ran into Walker's wife on the street. The Evening World reported that Mrs. Walker "horsewhipped the woman, whom she accused of having such an influence on Walker, that he could not free himself from her."
In the decades before air conditioning, roof gardens like the Hotel Navarre's, offered a cooling respite.
The incident greatly affected Walker and on the evening of May 12, he went to the East 22nd Street house and talked with his wife. Mrs. Walker later said, "we arranged it that he was to leave this woman and return to me." Walker told her "he thought he would be able to get away" that night and promised he would move back in the following day.
Walker returned to the Hotel Navarre. He would later tell investigators that he told Claudia, "that I considered it my duty to my wife and her family to return to her." Claudia's reaction was severe. She went into the bathroom and drank a bottle of carbolic acid. She was still alive when the house physicians had her sent to Roosevelt Hospital, but died shortly after arriving there.
The drama of the affair was not over. Walker's wife, according to The Evening World on May 29, "insisted upon her husband going to the funeral of the woman who had broken up her home." Following the burial, Walker started off with Claudia's mother to the Coroner's Office to make necessary arrangements for the inquest. But that did not happen. John B. Walker, who had been drinking heavily since the incident, died before they arrived there. The Evening World said, "Exposure and dissipation brought on the attack that killed Walker."
The Hotel Navarre was the scene of another extramarital affair at the time--that of Stanford White and showgirl Evelyn Nesbit. Although Nesbit was unmarried, the famous architect most definitely was. Throughout her days-long testimony during the 1908 case of Harry Kendall Thaw, who shot and killed White, Nesbit repeatedly recalled her lover White and her suitor Thaw separately visiting her in her suite at the Hotel Navarre.
from the collection of the New-York Historical Society
Yet another case of marital infidelity played out here beginning on April 26, 1907--the night Karl von Geissenhainer and Lillian Cornwall Knight were married. The couple moved into the Hotel Navarre, and Lillian soon felt neglected. According to The Sun, her attorney husband "spent most of his time elsewhere."
Her lawyer tracked Geissenhainer (who was the son of Congressman Jacob A. Geissnhainer) to the Wyoming apartments on West 57th Street. Shockingly, a woman answered the door. She told him, "you wished to speak to Mr. Geissenhainer about an important matter concerning his wife. I am his wife. What have you to say?"
As it turned out, Elsie C. Irwin and Geissenhainer had been married in March 1906. When told by the attorney that he represented the other Mrs. Geissenhainer, Elsie ran to the bedroom and wakened her husband. "He denied the allegations she made and tried to explain," reported The Sun.
The next day, Elsie Geissenhainer went to the Hotel Navarre and met with Lillian Geissenhainer. Each revealed the details of their marriages to the other. But what seemed to be a clear-cut case of bigamy turned out not to be. On February 9, 1909, The Sun reported that Gessenhainer's defense would be "that the first Mrs. Geissenhainer was already a wife when Geissenhainer married her, and that therefore the marriage was not a legal one."
Another guest to register under an assumed name was R. J. Young of Chicago, who checked in on June 20, 1917. He was, in fact, Jay Willard Robinson, a Sinn Fein agitator and German agent. While living here, he received packages of white handkerchiefs and white collars. The New-York Tribune reported on January 21, 1919, "These articles, which were to be given to Robinson, contained a supply of a new invisible writing fluid used [by] the German secret service." A naturalized American citizen living in Stockholm, Benjamin E. Benson, discovered the plot and notified American authorities.
Robinson was indicted as a spy for Germany. The Department of Justice's charge said, "German agents communicated with Robinson in code and by the use of invisible ink urging and instructing him to do many things that might obstruct the war preparations in the United States." The New-York Tribune explained on January 21, 1919, "The punishment, on conviction, is death by hanging."
Nurse Katherine McDermott lived here in 1922, two years after enactment of Prohibition. Like many others, the 32-year-old turned to patent medicines to circumvent the law. On September 20, 1922, The Evening World reported that she had been taken from the hotel to Bellevue Hospital, "suffering from what physicians said was alcoholism. She has been drinking Jamaica ginger for several days, according to police." (Jamaica ginger was an over-the-counter remedy for a variety of disorders like headache and gas. It contained up to 80 percent ethanol.)
On September 19, 1928, The New York Times reported, "The Hotel Navarre...will close its doors at 6 o'clock this evening to make way for a forty-three-story structure, the Navarre Mercantile Building." The article reminisced, "Thirty years ago the Navarre was one of the popular hotels in the Times Square district. Its architecture was considered one of the finest examples of French Renaissance type in this country."
A "farewell dinner" was held in the dining room just prior to the start of demolition. On October 7, The New York Times reported, "At the closing ceremonies which marked the final passing of the place last night Jefferson de Angelis mentioned many of the well-known stars who lived at the hotel for various periods, among them being the great tenor, Caruso; Lillian Russell and Frank Daniels."
Engineering News-Record, September 21, 1929
The Art Deco style Navarre Mercantile Building, designed by Sugarman & Berger, survives on the site.
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