The Fanciful "French Flats" at No. 21 East 21st Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1878 Miers Coryell, an expert in marine engines, and his wife Marie commissioned architect Bruce Price -- who would be remembered for buildings like Quebec City’s Chateau Frontenac -- to design an apartment building at 21 East 21st Street in the latest American Queen Anne style.  Working with builder David H. King, Jr. (who would become famous for more memorable structures like the Cornelius Vanderbuilt mansion, The Knickerbocker Club and the original Madison Square Garden), Price produced a Victorian delight.

At a time when apartment living was a novel idea among the financially comfortable, the apartments–one to a floor--offered a parlor and master bedroom to the front, three additional bedrooms, dining room and, to the rear, a servant’s room and kitchen.

photo by Alice Lum

A circular staircase at the front of the building was intended for guests and residents; a smaller one at the rear was for deliveries and servants’ use.

The architect (whose daughter, Emily Post, would go on to fame as the American dictator of etiquette) used red brick trimmed with carved limestone and white terra cotta to create visual interest and touches of tongue-in-cheek humor.

The AIA Guide to New York City called the little free-standing column "marvelous whimsy" -- photo by Alice Lum

The three-story bowed oriel bay with its many-paned windows is supported by fanciful corbeled medieval pillar; what the AIA Guide to New York City called “a marvelous example of late Victorian structural whimsy.”  Above the oriel, a semi-circular balcony is protected by a simply iron railing.  The sixth floor has a steeply slanted roof with two charming and decorative dormers.

Robust terra cotta fronds embellish the oriel window -- photo by Alice Lum

Carved into a stone over the doorway Price put “MC,” for Miers Coryell. He also included both his own name and that of the builder flanking the date stone.

When the building, marketed as “French Flats” to distinguish it from lowly tenements, was completed the Coryells moved in along with a lawyer and doctor.  Two years later in 1880 The New York Times reported that Fletcher Harper, the eldest son of J. Henry Harper of the publishing family, had taken an apartment there “before returning from his Summer residence in the country.”

A grotesque creature emerges from the terra cotta trim -- photo by Alice Lum

A year later a resident placed an ad for “an excellent cook, who will also wash bed and table linen.”  Within the decade, in 1890, the first floor apartment was renting for $1,400 a year (about $3,385 per month in today's money).  Among the residents in the 1890's was Dr. Wickes Washburn who established his office of psychiatry here.  He would remain through the first years of the 20th century.

Trouble came in 1901 when one of Bruce Price’s architects, Count Jules Henry De Siborn, accused a new “hallboy," Ulysses Oppenheim, of stealing $84.  Hallboys ran errands, delivered mail and were generally useful to the residents.  The New York Times reported that the count “lives in the fashionable apartment house at 21 East Twenty-first Street.”  The hallboy disappeared.

A menacing monster peers from above the balcony, another of Price's delightful touches -- photo by Alice Lum

On September 3, 1908 Elmer A. Darling purchased the building, which by now had a store in the lower level.  Darling, who owned the ten-story loft building next door to the east, was concerned that the apartment house would be razed and a larger structure erected. The Times said he “makes this purchase to protect his side light.”

photo by Alice Lum

The “fashionable” spirit of the apartment house quickly faded as little by little the apartments gave way to other uses.  In 1919 the building was the headquarters of the Pressmen’s Union and later the home of the American Institute of Phrenology.

In 1953 the once-fashionable apartment building was renovated into a “Class B Hotel.” The floor-long apartments were cut up into seven rooms to a floor, the sixth floor carved into ten rooms.  In 1977 the hotel was closed and the interiors gutted for a conversion to an apartment house.  Opened a year later, it now houses 26 apartments.

Today No. 21 East 21st Street looks remarkably unchanged on the outside; although there are severe alterations to the stoop and basement level and a truly unfortunate choice of entrance doors.  Overall, however, Bruce Price’s eccentric design lives on and the fantastic little column still catches the eyes of passersby.

Central Park's Harlem Meer Boathouse

The Meer Boathouse -- photo Project for Public Spaces

When Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won the commission to design Central Park in 1857, the northernmost area from 106th to 110th Street was not part of the project. In 1868 the additional 65 acres of land, which was mostly marshland, was acquired and the park extended. The architects initially planned a formal promenade with a canal but decided instead on a lake with a natural-appearing wandering shoreline. Using the Dutch word for lake, they called it the Meer.

The 11-acre artificial lake, the bottom of which was lined with concrete out of the public’s fear of malaria, was a popular picnic spot in the northern park’s rugged terrain.

The Harleem Meer in 1869

In 1941 Parks Commissioner Robert Moses redesigned the Meer, replacing its naturalistic shoreline with a concrete rim. The Meer was soon fenced in under Moses’ direction and two playgrounds installed. As part of his renovation, the commissioner had a long, one-story boathouse constructed in 1947.

By the 1980s, more than a decade of neglect a vandalism left the boathouse what The New York Times called “a burned-out, graffiti-encrusted shell.”

The burned-out Robert Moses-Era Boathouse at the edge of the trash-filled, concrete-rimmed Meer

New York Magazine reported in November 1986 that Parks Commissioner Henry Stern and the Central Park Conservancy had developed a plan to rebuild a new boathouse near the site of the now-abandoned one.

In August 1987 the City approved a proposal from a partnership of Harlem real estate investors and a Harlem restaurant operator to rebuild the boathouse as a restaurant. Architects Buttrick White & Burtis were given the commission to design the $5 million project.

The Central Park Conservancy, at the same time, dredged the Meer of 20,000 cubic yards of silt, removed truckloads of trash from the lake, and installed an aeration system. Robert Moses’ concrete rim was replaced with the naturalistic shoreline from Olmsted and Vaux’s design and thousands of fish were introduced to the lake.

Buttrick White & Burtris produced a boathouse so sympathetic to the Victorian architecture of the park that few visitors would guess it is modern. Constructed of stone and brick with a slate tile roof, its fanciful gables and bell tower fit remarkably with the other structures in the park.

Reopened in 1993, the Meer has a new artificial island similar to the one that was lost in the 1966 renovations and a “whimsical” sandy beach.

The restored Meet with the Dana Center "Boathouse" -- photo Project for Public Spaces

Rather than housing a restaurant as was expected, the boathouse became the Charles Dana Discovery Center, where children learn about the environment and can participate in a free catch-and-release fishing program.

New York's Christmas Windows

One of the Macy's 2010 Broadway side windows

Samuel Lord and George W. Taylor moved their successful dry goods business into their new 5-story cast iron palace on Broadway at 20th Street in 1870. The cousins enjoyed tremendous success, much of it due to their innovative marketing.

One of their pioneering ideas was the installation of Christmas windows. It was the start of a treasured New York City tradition that would sweep the country.

Lord & Taylor’s holiday windows put shoppers in the Christmas spirit and, as the cousins knew, that spirit would translate into spending.  Before the turn of the century, most of the grand emporiums would dress their wide show windows with Christmas displays.

On Christmas Eve, 1879, The New York Times reported that “Through the slush and the mud the gayly-dressed ladies passed, and those who had no purchases to make did not disdain to stand and look into the Christmas windows. Every store on the street displayed in its windows wreaths of holly or of laurel, and the entire scene spoke of the coming Christmas.”

In 1902 the newspaper reported on the joyful affect of the Christmas windows on “factory girls” and underprivileged children. “It was no uncommon sight to see a bevy of them at a brilliantly lighted window…The only unattended children who were out in the crowd were grimy little ragamuffins of both sexes who had filtered in from the tenement house districts to gloat on the rare shows in the display windows and exchange in quaint vernacular comment on the eye feasts.”

The joy of the Christmas window was not always without misfortune. Four days before Christmas in 1901 Christopher Hendricks lit the gas burners that illuminated his windows, catching the display on fire and burning down his store at a cost of $3000.

By the middle of the 20th Century department store Christmas windows were as much a part of the New York Christmas season as carols and street corner Santas. In 1959 The Times said that “more than a million eyes have stared at the Christmas windows of the city’s department stores.” By the end of the century that number would be multiplied many times over.

Lord & Taylor window from 2008

Today Lord & Taylor, who started it all, keeps its tradition of highly detailed and lavishly animated windows. Macy’s, who unveils their Christmas windows the day after their famous Thanksgiving Day Parade, features two sets of windows: On Broadway the windows from 34th Street to 35th Street narrate a story or theme while on 34th Street the revered and wonderfully-animated windows depicting scenes from the movie Miracle on 34th Street are redisplayed each year.

A scene from Macy's "Miracle on 34th Street" windows

Saks & Company generally tells a children’s story through their 5th Avenue windows while Barney’s trendy and humorously on-the-edge windows are a New York must-see. In late November Bloomingdale’s unveils its unpredictable windows – celebrating Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera in 2004 to “A Swing’ Christmas Holiday” in 2008. Reflecting the tasteful goods inside the store, Bergdorf Goodman’s windows are always urbane and sophisticated.

The appeal of the Manhattan department store windows is such that velvet ropes are installed to control the lines of tourists and New Yorkers alike. For them Christmas would not be Christmas without the festive, animated windows that, for one or two months a year, do not attempt to sell anything, but simply make the viewer a child again.

Bygone Lord & Taylor window

The Enchanting 1921 Pomander Walk

In 1920 Thomas J. Healy had big plans. The Irishman had come to New York in 1886 at the age of 15 and by the time the First World War had ended, he owned five restaurants and catering establishments, some in the Broadway theatre district like the 1000-seat Golden Glade.

Healy let it be known that he wanted to build a sixteen-story hotel on the irregular plot of land he acquired from the Eugene Higgins Estate in a 200-year lease. He put off the hotel project, however, and instead contracted architects King and Campbell to design an enchanting enclave of miniature English houses, stretching from 94th to 95th Streets between Broadway and West End Avenue.

Using for their inspiration the play “Pomander Walk,” which opened on Broadway in 1910 and featured a tiny street in 18th Century London, the architects devised 20 two-story houses facing the 20-foot wide lane and seven facing 94th and 95th Streets.

The diminutive homes were in the popular Tudor style with irregular rooflines and gables, half-timbering, brick and stucco. While they appeared to be individual houses from the outside, in fact each was a two-unit rental apartment building with separate apartments on either floor. The fairy-tale size required that the kitchenettes were tucked into a walk-in closet.

The New York Times revealed the plans on April 19, 1921, the day after the project was filed with the Manhattan Bureau of Buildings. “Of the twenty-eight houses in this picturesque settlement, sixteen will have four rooms and bath on each of the two floors and twelve three rooms and bath in each apartment.”

“Massive and orate iron gates, after the period of 1710, when the original Pomander Walk was built, surrounded by the insignia of the Crowing Cock, will ornament and guard either entrance to the Walk and be presided over by uniformed lackeys.”

The sub-headline to the article called it a “Street of Little Houses, Lawns, Flowers and Fountains, in Shadow of Broadway.” Each house was estimated to cost $2,950.

Only five months later The Times gave an update, saying that “West siders have watched with considerable interest the small house improvement in what was formerly a vacant plot…” The article reported that although the project was still under construction, over half of the houses “have already been disposed of by rental.”

King and Campbell intensified the miniature village effect by fronting the cottages with small-sized hedges and flowerbeds. Window boxes and lively colors create a Munchkinland, magical atmosphere. A year after its completion Architecture & Building Magazine said “The effect obtained is as though as portion of the olden times was transported through the heart of the modern world.”

Healy, according to Random House's 1939 "New York City Guide," intended the Walk to be inhabited by theatrical people.  Immediately upon completion it was home to the likes of Rosalind Russell, stage actress Elsie Barlett, composer Herbert Stothart at #7 and Mary Warnock, a Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl at #22. Film actors Lilian Gish, Madeline and Nancy Carroll lived here as did drama critic Ward Morehouse.

If Thomas Healy did intend Pomander Walk to be a temporary project that would be razed for his once-anticipated hotel, his death in 1927 precluded those plans.

In 2005 restoration architects Cutsogeorge Tooman & Allen Architects, P.C. were commissioned to rehabilitate the facades of the charming complex. The firm executed a $650,000 masonry and stucco restoration and rebuilding, restored the wooden doors and windows, removal of façade coatings and repainting.

Charm has its price. In 2005 a two-bedroom apartment sold for $610,000 and a few months later a similar one sold for $725,000. In 2009 a 1500 square foot apartment sold for $1.5 million.

Pomander Walk, one of the most enchanting and delightful residential areas in Manhattan, was designated a New York City landmark in 1982.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree

Christmas Eve of 1931 was not an especially happy time in New York City. The Great Depression was at its height. Fully one-third of the manufacturing companies in the city had closed. Fortune Magazine estimated that 750,000 residents were unemployed, with “160,000 of them at the end of their tether.”

The legions of construction workers building Rockefeller Center were an exception.

As the twelve buildings that would comprise the Center slowly took shape, a scraggily balsam fir still managed to hold out, rooted in the rock at the eastern portion of the central lot near the booth where the men collected their paychecks. On December 24, workmen light-heartedly strung cranberries and paper garlands on the tree and hung a few tin cans from its branches.

Rockefeller Center had its first Christmas tree.

The Center was not without a tree after that. Merle Crowell, Rockefeller Center’s marketing manager, recognized the potential and, as the first years passed, created an icon. Organ music was piped into the plaza from Radio City Music Hall, and glee clubs and girl scouts, local choirs and female trumpeters were variously used to draw crowds. Crowell saw to it that the first formal lighting in 1933 was televised; a full two decades before televisions would become common in American households.

The tree quickly became an annual event, anticipated by everyone and heavily covered in the media. When the tree was chosen, the location, size and owners were immediately publicized. And the arrival of the tree, to this day, draws emotional attention. Tree have arrived by truck, have been floated down the Hudson River, and have inched their way through Manhattan streets and avenues before dawn.

For a period live reindeer in pens accompanied the tree.

To meet the Center’s specifications, the tree must be at least 675 feet tall and 35 feet wide. But in 1948 the Norway spruce soared to a whopping 90 feet.

The Rockefeller Christmas Tree in the 1950s

Not every idea was a good one. The next year The New York Times announced that “The seventeenth annual Rockefeller Center Christmas tree…will feature a new costume, the result of spraying its 75-foot height with 200 gallons of fireproof white camouflage paint.”

The idea of hanging aluminum icicles from the branches one year was another idea that sounded good. At least on paper. Unfortunately, when a wind storm arose, the long metal decorations were dislodged and “flew around the area like spears.”

In 1954 artist Valerie Clarebout created the white wire sculptures of the trumpeting herald angels that flank the Channel Gardens leading from Fifth Avenue to the plaza.  Although they were intended to be temporary, the public insisted they become a permanent part of the Christmas tree setting.

As the debilitating financial recession disheartened the country in 1973, the Center announced that the 65-foot tree would be “a little less bright this year.” The tree that year was turned off several hours earlier and 25 percent fewer lights were used.   A few years later, on December 9, 1980 only a few hours after the lighting of the tree, a 19-year old Bronx man climbed to the top. “But he soon came down into the arms of waiting police officers,” said The Times.

As a familiar symbol of the American holiday season the tree featured prominently in countless television shows and movies.  In 1969 television viewers watched Snoopy ice skate below the tree in the animated “Peanuts” special “A Boy Named Charlie Brown.”

Today the tree is topped with a Swarovski star, 10 feet in diameter and consisting of 25,000 crystals. Over five miles of 30,000 lights are used and, starting in 2010, those bulbs are energy efficient LEDs. The daily energy savings they create is equal to that used to power a 2,000 square foot home for a month.

After New Years, until 1972, the gigantic trees were “lopped into pieces at Rockefeller Center and carted away to the city dump,” as The Times reported. Environmentally-conscious citizens questioned the waste.

Creative recycling took over with the tree being reduced to, in one case, 3 tons of mulch donated to the Boy Scouts or donated to the U.S. Equestrian team in New Jersey, used as a cushioned obstacle jump. The 2010 tree will be used a lumber for Habitat for Humanity projects in New York, Indian, the Gulf Coast and Brazil.

The 2010 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree -- photo The Associated Press

From its modest Depression Era beginnings the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has risen to celebrity status. The lighting ceremony is now a 2-hour nationally televised event. Tens of thousands of tourists flock to the tree every day throughout the month of December and the majestic tree manages to relight the holiday spirit in nearly all of them.

The St. Denis Hotel -- Broadway and East 11th Street

General Ulysses S. Grant took rooms at the St. Denis Hotel after the Civil War so he could quietly work on his memoirs. The general, however, quickly developed writer’s block and his work came to a standstill.

Mark Twain, whose company had contracted to publish the book, immediately traveled to New York and took a room at the hotel for more than three months. The project was saved.

The comfortable hotel on the corner of Broadway and East 11th Street where Twain and Grant worked on the manuscript was already famous. Opened in June of 1853 it was designed by architect James Renwick whose family owned the property. Renwick was responsible for the magnificent Grace Church directly across the street.

“Miller’s Stranger’s Guide to the City of New York,” published in 1866, recommended the six-story hotel. “It is architecturally one of the handsomest buildings on Broadway, occupying seventy-six feet on that thoroughfare, and one hundred and twenty on Eleventh street. Besides parlors, reception-rooms, and reading-rooms, the St. Denis contains over one hundred and fifty well lighted and ventilated apartments. The hotel is…the frequent resort of wealthy and distinguished foreigners. The ‘up town’ location of the St. Denis is on the most fashionable part of Broadway.”

When Sarah Bernhardt visited New York on her first American tour, she stayed here, as did P.T. Barnum, Colonel William “Buffalo Bill “Cody and Chester A. Arthur. Here Alexander Graham Bell gave his first New York demonstration of the new telephone in 1877.

The hotel got its name from the original proprietor, Denis Julian, who had for years run a famous restaurant on Washington Place known as Julian’s. The land on which it was built had been part of the Brevoort estate for two centuries and became Renwick property as the families merged through marriage. The first-class accommodations included $52,000 in furnishings.





11th Street Entrance - NYPD collection

In 1853 the Crystal Palace exhibition opened, drawing thousands of visitors. The influx of tourists raised the price of butter and cheese to more than five cents a pound. More importantly, the hotels of the city were filled. The New York Times offered help to those seeking accommodations and recommended the St. Denis as a smaller establishment that did not “entertain so great a crowd.”

“Quiet gentlemen with their families naturally seek such,” said The Times. The hotel united “the convenience and elegance of the hotel with the retirement of the private boarding-house.”

Unhappily for the St. Denis, the waiters went on strike on April 21 of that year; the worst possible timing. According to The New York Times, the hotel “retained barely enough [staff] for the emergency, and is determined to employ girls rather than accede to the strike.”

James. D. McCabe, Jr., in his 1882 New York by Gaslight, said of the first-class hotels, “They are furnished in magnificent style, and provide every comfort and luxury for their guests at moderate charges.” Yet McCabe warned the potential tourist, “All the New York hotels suffer more or less from impostors or dead-beats. The best houses seek in every way to exclude improper characters, but, in spite of the vigilance of the proprietors, such persons will find their way into them.”

And so it was with the St. Denis. Well-dressed and seemingly reputable guests would sometimes check in with the express purpose of larceny.

In 1878 Sarah E. Biggs and Edward Fuller were arrested on charges of stealing jewelry and wearing apparel from guests at the hotel, as well as forgery. The New York Times said that “Mrs. Biggs, alias Fuller, alias Clark, alias Mrs. Drake, is about 35 years old, of medium stature, dark complexion and hair, and ordinary features. She was attired in deep mourning yesterday, but wore a light veil over her face.”

Her accomplice was 21 years old and, according to the newspaper, had “smooth features and a hang-dog expression.”

Similarly, in 1905 police arrested Alice Lansen who went under the name of the Baroness de Vorte Salmo for grand larceny. Lansen had in her possession two jeweled fans and “considerable clothing” worth $800 which was the property of Mrs. William Slater of Washington, D.C.

Lansen’s husband was humiliated and told a New York Times reporter he was considering suicide over the publicity.

“The disgrace would be unbearable,” he said, “I am noble. My wife is of noble birth. Why do they not leave us along in our sad misery and poverty?”

Police officials were, apparently, unmoved.

In 1891 the hotel was enlarged "by a new and handsome addition which more than doubles it former capacity," and the "latest improvements" were installed.  Among the upgrades was a system of fire gongs that were rung to alert sleeping guests of danger.

While still owned by the Renwick family, the hotel was managed by William Taylor and his son from 1875 to 1912. Then, on March 16, 1912 the St. Denis Hotel Company was organized to take it over. The new group spent $52,000 in improvements and new furniture, bringing the hotel in line with the latest Edwardian styles.  The syndicate signed a ten-year lease at $4,000 a month.

It would be the beginning of the end of the historic hotel.

Within a year the company filed for bankruptcy, owing $4,000 in back rent. Counsel for the creditors explained that, although there were many resident guests, the northward movement of the entertainment and shopping districts was hurting business.

The redecorated foyer in 1914

On February 11, 1920 the Renwick family finally sold the St. Denis Hotel at auction. A syndicate headed by Garfield Moses, Ely Bernays and Joseph M. Brody purchased the building and announced it would be demolished for an office building.

The remodeled "Colonial' Dining Room in 1914

Instead, however, the group renovated the St. Denis, stripping off Renwick’s decorative window treatments and leaving a bland, flat-surfaced cube. A second entrance was installed on the Broadway side and the first floor was gutted for retail spaces, four on Broadway and three on 11th Street. The grand dining rooms and reception areas were demolished for non-descript offices.



Shortly after this photo was taken, the St. Denis would be stripped of anything attractive.  -- photo NYPL Collection

“The changing of the St. Denis Hotel to an office building obliterates one of the oldest hotels in the city,” mourned The New York Times. “The St. Denis Hotel was the fashionable headquarters half a century ago.”

On November 4, 1927 the owners painted it with orange lacquer as a “jazz touch.”

Today no passerby could imagine the history or importance of the once-magnificent structure on the corner of East 11th Street and Broadway. A purely featureless structure, its colorful history is largely forgotten.

No hint of the former hotel's glory days remains.

UPDATE:  The building was demolished in 2019.

The Royalton Hotel - 44 West 44th Street

Unmarried men in Manhattan faced a problem when it came to finding housing in the late 19th Century. Bachelors were not generally welcomed by most boarding houses and respectable apartment houses. Yet the number of unmarried men in the city skyrocketed between 1870 to 1890, when about 45 percent of the male population was single.

Available accommodations were barely adequate yet one observer in 1898 commented that “the bachelor was not considered to be entitled to much consideration; any old thing was good enough for him…Anyone who was old enough and had the means to marry and yet did not, was not thought to be entitled to anything better.”

In 1880 “bachelor flats” had began emerging to fill the obvious niche, one of the earliest being the Benedick on Washington Square which was completed that year. Ten years later The Real Estate Record & Builders Guide said that the bachelor flat “is a product of our modern life. It is not a social fad, ready to disappear directly. It has ceased to be a novelty. It has come to stay, for it filled a gap in the life of every unmarried man who has become weary of the boarding house, the furnished room, or the hotel.”

In 1898 another niche was filled – a bachelor apartment building for unmarried men of means. Designed by Rossiter & Wright, the Royalton Hotel rose at 44 West 44th Street, smack in the middle of the gentlemen’s club district, making it extremely convenient to well-heeled bachelors.

The red brick Regency-inspired hotel sat atop a two-story limestone base dominated by a massive pedimented entranceway supported by two Ionic pillars. For the convenience of the tenants, entry could be made from either 43rd or 44th Streets.

Although construction was not without problems – several general strikes were ordered when, for instance, the Housesmith’s Union complained that work being done by the Metal Wire Lathers’ Union belonged to them – the house opened for business in 1897.

The dignified interiors and accommodations led the Cornell University Club to take rooms on the first floor that first year for $2500. A year later horse-playing teen aged employees brought bad press to the hotel when Morris Hotkiss, 18 years old, closed the elevator gates on hallboy William Moore, also 18, who had “annoyed him on the trip to the top of the house by fooling and skylarking.”

Moore attempted to force the gate open as the elevator descended, crushing his body and killing him.

Although it was, as The New York Times referred to it “a bachelor apartment house,” the Royalton boasted a first-class dining room and restaurant on the first floor which attracted the cream of New York society. On January 23, 1900, having been to the Lyceum Theatre, The Count and Countess de Castellane were the guests of Edmund Randolph “at a little supper” along with Mr. and Mrs. George J. Gould and Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Smith.

A reception for the US Ambassador to the German Empire was given by the Cornell University Club in their clubrooms here in 1901 and the same year the New York Yacht Club hosted a series of lectures on ship designing.

Among the wealthy residents were James Amm, an oil operator and refiner who died leaving a $6.75 million estate, and Frederick Kursheedt, president of Kursheedt Manufacturing Co.

By 1904 the fine club buildings and impressive hotels that lined 44th Street were included in the routes of the tourist observation coaches. “The observation coaches turn from Fifth Avenue toward Sixth Avenue into Forty-fourth Street,” explained The New York Times, “’And now,’ says the festive guide, through his megaphone,’we are entering Rubberneck Row.’

For the next four minutes the sightseers sway their heads from side to side looking at Delmonico’s, Sherry’s, the Harvard Club, the Yale Club, the Century Associate, the New York Yacht Club, Mrs. Osborn’s Theatre, The American Institute, the Mechanics’ Institute, the Bar Associate clubhouse…the Royalton, and the Algonquin, which fill up both sides of the street for the entire block…”

In time the need for bachelor hotels waned and the Royalton welcomed tenants of both sexes. Its proximity to Broadway filled the apartments with theatre figures. Actresses and actors like Ruth Gates, Katharine Witchie Riggs, Alexander Granach, and Lucy Beaumont lived here. Drama critics Lawrence Reamer, who wrote for The Sun, and George Jean Nathan, the “dean of Broadway drama critics,” had apartments in the Royalton as did humorist Robert Benchly. Ben Haas, who wrote over 100 novels, died in his room in 1977.

In time the aging hotel became just an “average behind Times Square hotel” with little to offer in terms of modern conveniences or décor. In 1988 it was totally remodeled by designers Phliippe Starck and Gruzen Samton for hotelier Ian Schrager into a luxurious, French-inspired boutique hotel. The New York Times commented on “chair legs shaped like ram’s horns” and “a champagne bar that conjured up the inside of a genie’s bottle.”

Although the hotel’s restaurant, 44, and the trendy lobby became a fashionable meeting place for journalists and celebrities, it would all be changed again in 2007.

The updated 2007 lobby design - photo blog.aia.org

Purchased by the Mogans Hotel Group, architects Roman & Williams revamped the building. Restaurateur John McDonald explained that “After 20 years, what was there really needed to be completed changed to pay respect to what it was.”

Philippe Starck did not agree. “I think if you are lucky enough to own an icon, you shouldn’t kill the icon,” he told The New York Times.

The hotel today is far from “average.” The rubbernecking at the Royalton Hotel is no longer directed at the exterior, but at the extraordinary interiors.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Photo blog.aia.org