The Lost Hotel Diplomat - 108-116 West 43rd Street

photograph by Wurts Bros., from the collection of the New York Public Library

A social club for actors, the Jolly Club, was formed in 1867 to evade laws against the sale of alcohol on Sundays.  It eventually morphed into a fraternal order, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE), that focused on philanthropy, social service and patriotic causes.  By the early years of the 20th century, the Elks Club had become one of America's largest fraternal groups and it increasingly concentrated on veterans, youth, and civic programs.

Throughout the United States, the New York Lodge No. 1 was known as the Mother Lodge.  On July 8, 1911, The New York Times reported that its newly erected home at 108-116 West 43rd Street had opened.  "It is a twelve-story steel frame fireproof structure...with a roof garden and two basements," said the article.  Designed by James Riley Gordon, the Renaissance Revival-style structure was shaped as a T and cost $1.25 million to build and furnish (about $42.6 million in 2026).  The tripartite design of the 43rd Street elevation included a three-story limestone base.  Gordon designed it as a rusticated arcade that supported a double-height, paired Doric colonnade.

The building was designed as a T, with a relatively shallow front section.  photo by Irving Underhill, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

The eight-story, brick-faced midsection was adorned only by two stone faux balconies.  The top two floors were faced in stone, their paired, engaged Corinthian columns complementing and balancing those below.

The New York Times described the cavernous Lodge Room as, "87 feet by 93 feet, the walls rising to a height of 32 feet," adding, "There are two tiers of boxes, twenty-eight boxes in each, with a promenade encircling each tier for use when the room is used for balls or banquets."

James Riley Gordon's office released a watercolor rendering of the Lodge Room.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

The lower floors included "lounging rooms, writing rooms, a handsome grill room and restaurant, billiard room, and spacious bowling alleys in the basement," said the article.  On the roof were a solarium and roof garden.  

The Hampton Magazine explained, "This completely appointed building is the headquarters for 2,800 members of the original lodge and for visiting Elks from all over the United States."  The 216 "outside sleeping rooms" on the upper floors cost visiting members $1.50 a day, with the 24 suites renting for double that amount.  (Rent for a suite for the night would equal $100 today.)

The Columbian, July 1910 (copyright expired)

The clubhouse was not only the venue of meetings, benefits, large dinners, and dances, it was often the scene of members' funerals.  On April 30, 1915, for example, the Independent Republican reported, "Nearly 1,500 members of the Elks and St. Cecile Lodge of Masons attended the funeral of John Bunny in the Elks' clubhouse, 108 West Forty-third Street, Wednesday night," and the following year, on March 3, 1915, The New York Times reported on the funeral of John J. Brogan, which was held in the Lodge Room.

The Elks' focus on patriotism was reflected in a dinner on the roof garden on the night of June 30, 1915.  Eleven days earlier, the battleship USS Arizona was launched at the Brooklyn Navy Yards.  The impressive ceremonies included the battleships Wyoming, Maine, and Cumberland.  The Elks hosted "twelve young officers of the battleships," said the article.

Every year the Lodge Room rang with the laughter and squeals of children.  On Christmas Eve 1917, The New York Times reported on the 2,500 needy children and 500 indigent families who gathered around the massive Christmas tree and enjoyed "entertainment and presentation of gifts."  The event had ballooned by Christmas 1919, when the newspaper reported, "Seven thousand children attended the fifth annual Christmas celebration."  The children received "candies, fruits, sweaters, stockings, caps and toys," while 600 needy families were given baskets containing, "two chickens, cranberries, potatoes, lettuce, bread and groceries."

The Elks also hosted Thanksgiving dinners for hundreds.  Theirs, at least in 1923, was somewhat unexpected.  The New York Times reported on November 29, "A 'pigs' knuckle and sauerkraut' dinner, followed by a dance, was held last night by New York Lodge 1."

Less welcomed press came in October 1925 when Federal agents seized nine barrels of beer from the barroom.  On November 16, the bar room and the grill were padlocked for a period of six months.  The restaurant was allowed to operate during the decree.

It might have been the onslaught of the Great Depression that strained the Elks' finances.  On May 8, 1930, The New York Times reported that the lodge had leased the fourth to twelfth floors "to a private corporation for the operation of the hotel."  The attempt did not succeed.  

On April 12, 1934, the property was sold in foreclosure for $600,000 (the only bid offered, it equaled $14 million today).  Less than a month later, on May 5, the building opened as the Hotel Delano, operated by the Radio City Hotel Corporation.

The Hotel Delano accepted both transient and permanent residents.  Among the latter was actress Agnes Tibbetts.  For years she and her sister performed in vaudeville as the Neilson Sisters.  She had appeared on Broadway in Mae West's play Diamond Lil and recently opened in The Jayhawker with Fred Stone.  In June 1936 she was in rehearsals for Crime, a production of the WPA Theatre Project.  She would not see opening night.  The 60-year-old suffered a fatal heart attack in her rooms on June 21.

The Hotel Delano was short lived.  The following month, the Drier Hotel Organization leased the building and renamed it the Center Hotel.  It continued to accept both transient and permanent residents.

A colorful resident was Simon Lake, described by The New York Times as a "veteran submarine enthusiast."  He was obsessed with discovering the lost H.M.S. Hussar, a British frigate that sank in the East River in 1780.  It reportedly went down with as much as $40.7 million in gold (by 2026 conversions).  On September 25, 1936, he held a news conference in his hotel room.  He told reporters that he had notified the Treasury Department that he had "discovered a hulk in the East River" that he was confident was the Hussar.  The 70-year-old explained, "My probing leads me to believe the Hussar could very well be raised for exhibition at the World's Fair.  I hope to begin work under the supervision of the Coast Guard within a month."  (The H.M.S. Hussar remains undiscovered.)

Reporters were back at Simon Lake's room the following year.  He "declared that he had perfected plans for cargo-carrying submarines and that he would make these plans available to the United States Government in the event of a war," reported The New York Times.  "So far, I have kept plans for these undersea cargo ships to myself, because of their tremendous value to foreign powers during wartime.  But if we get mixed up in another conflict, I shall certainly give my ideas to the Government," he said.

Lake had good reason to suspect "another conflict."  The hotel's ballroom (formerly the Lodge Room) was the scene of a mass meeting of the Greater New York Retail Furnishings and Dry Goods Association on October 4, 1936.  It reflected the current rising global tensions.  The members voted "to support the anti-German boycott" and to "discontinue at once any and all relations with any importing or wholesale house that sells German goods anywhere in this country and/or uses the services of Nazi-controlled vessels."

The ballroom was increasingly being rented for political assemblies.  Two months later, on December 18, 1936, 2,000 people filled the room for a three-hour meeting "to urge the right of a Mexican asylum for Trotsky, exiled Russian leader," reported The New York Times.

The first day of the convention of the International Ladies Handbag, Pocketbook and Novelty Workers Union opened on May 7, 1938 in the ballroom.  It started off badly.  At 10:20 that morning, a "free-for-all fight," as described by The New York Times, took place.  Of the more than 100 persons involved, four were injured and one hospitalized.

In the meantime, theatrical figures continued to live here.  Joseph Butterly, whose stage name was Joseph Allenton, lived here at the time.  Born in 1889, he had appeared on Broadway in You Can't Take It With You, The Pure in Heart, and Ladies Don't Lie, among other plays.

Retired actress Ella Willard was the widow of character actor Charles Willard.  She made her debut in Hazel Kirke in 1885 and would play with Eddy Foy in That Casey Girl, with Dustin Farnum in The White Slave, and in The Virginian.  

By the time Ella Willard died at the age of 83 on January 13, 1945, the Hotel Central had become the Hotel Diplomat.  The management staged dances in the Roof Garden during the summer months, and the ballroom continued to be leased for political and labor meetings.  An announcement in the Daily World on February 13, 1949 was titled, "Call to a City-Wide Mass Conference for a Democratic Jury System."  Nearly two decades later, on February 25, 1964, an announcement in the same newspaper was titled, "Protest Nazi War Criminals' Presence in USA."

On September 25, 1961, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King addressed the Drug and Hospital Employees Union here.  He announced a "campaign to double the number of Negro voters in the South," according to The New York Times.  

Engineering Review, February 1912 (copyright expired)

Similar assemblies continued here.  On May 26, 1968, the Daily World reported that actor and activist Ossie Davis would deliver the keynote address at the "Founding Convention of the Freedom and Peace Party," here.

The Hotel Diplomat was acquired by the Durst Organization in 1974 and by the 1980s it had degraded to a SRO hotel.  In 1987 the tenants were "generally the elderly and poor," according to The New York Times journalist Christopher Gray on December 13, that year.  At the time of his article, the Durst Organization was preparing to "buy out about 50 S.R.O. tenants" in order to demolish the structure and redevelop the site.

(postcard from the author's collection)

It was an arduous process.  It would not be until November 7, 1993 that architectural journalist David Dunlap reported, "It has been nearly four years since the owners, the Durst Organization, filed a demolition application for the decrepit single-room-occupancy hotel at 108 West 43d Street."  But finally, he wrote, the once proud building was "clad in a spindly web of scaffolding that heralds its imminent demise."

The handsome building with its vibrant history was demolished in 1994.

many thanks to architect Sean Weine for prompting this post