The Hotel Albert - University Place and 11th Street

 

Midway between two elegant residential enclaves--Washington Square and Union Square--the block of East 11th Street between University Place and Broadway was lined with elegant Greek Revival and Italianate homes in the mid-1850s.  In 1875, businessman Albert S. Rosenbaum hired architect James Irving Howard to convert three of them--32 through 36 East 11th Street--into a hotel.  (The addresses would be renumbered 46 to 50 later.)  Containing 120 rooms, the Hotel St. Stephen was opened in 1876 under the proprietorship of hotelier William Ryder.

An advertisement on October 8, 1876 read:

11th St. West, Nos. 32, 34, 36--Elegant Rooms, newly furnished, stationary washstands, ample closets, all conveniences, with or without Board; terms very moderate; strictly first class.  Hotel St. Stephens [sic].

The History and Commerce of New York called the St. Stephen, "one of the best appointed hotels in a city noted for its superior hotel accommodations."  Rates "are $1.00 per day and upward," said the article.  The base figure would translate to about $35.50 in 2026.

Soon after opening, the hotel was nearly the victim of a sneak thief.  On November 28, 1876, Henry Bird checked in.  That evening, a clerk, De Witt Bogardus, walked through the halls "to see if everything was right," according to the New York Herald.  He saw Bird, "leave his room and stealthily secret something under the carpet of the main corridor."  Bogardus summoned Detective Slevin who discovered that Bird had hidden a pair of "nippers."  Slevin said they "are used by hotel thieves for opening room doors."  When Bird could not provide an explanation, he was arrested for carrying burglars' tools.

In 1882, Albert S. Rosenbaum increased his enterprise by erecting the Hotel Albert, an apartment hotel, abutting the St. Stephen at the corner.  Henry Janesway Hardenberg (who was simultaneously working on the Western Union Telegraph Building and a long row of houses on West 73rd Street off Central Park West), was the architect.  As he had done in his Dakota Apartment two years earlier, he creatively blended styles--in this case French Renaissance and Queen Anne.  William D. Ryder now managed both properties for Rosenbaum.

An advertisement on November 5, 1883 called The Albert, "One of the finest furnished and safest apartment-houses in New-York City."  Almost as a post script, "Also, Hotel St. Stephen," was added at the bottom.

Stereopticon slide by Byron Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The two venues coexisted--the St. Stephen as a transient hotel and The Albert as an apartment house.  Perhaps the first artistic figure to patronize either of them was writer Robert Lewis Stevenson, who occupied rooms in the St. Stephen in 1888.  In January 1919, The New York Times recalled his posing for Auguste Saint-Gaudens for his "medallion portrait."  The article said, "His method of 'sitting for his portrait,' however, was to lie, always smoking his inevitable cigarettes, in his bed in the old Hotel St. Stephen."

Living in The Hotel Albert in 1890 were Charles and Anne G. Rhind and their 47-year-old daughter Frances.  They were members of "one of the oldest Southern families in the city," according to The Evening World, and "belong to an ultra-fashionable set."  

At around 1:00 on the morning of December 14, T. P. Sorrenson, who was staying in the St. Stephen and whose rooms looked into the courtyard, "saw a white object pass his window," as reported by the New-York Tribune.  The object, it turned out, was Frances Rhind in a suicidal plunge. 

Living in The Albert in the 1890s was author Kate Douglas Wiggins, best known for her novel and stage play Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.  

An seventh floor was added to the Hotel Albert in 1891 and by 1895 the two operations were merged as the Hotel Albert-St. Stephen.

An 1896 ad touts the combined hotels. (copyright expired)

The operation continued to expand.  In 1903 the architectural firm of Buchman & Fox was hired to design a 12-story addition at 67 University Place.  The architects' design made no attempt to meld into the earlier structure.  An advertisement in the September 1906 issue of American Education listed the room rates at "$1 per day up.  100 rooms with private bath $2 per day up."

The addition was depicted in an advertisement in American Education in September 1906 (copyright expired)

In 1918, the Knott Hotels took over the management of the complex.  It wasted little time to disassociate the vintage St. Stephen buildings from the hotel operation.  On May 19, 1920, the New-York Tribune reported that the A. S. Rosenbaum estate had leased the Hotel St. Stephen building, "a landmark of the University place section," to the Bonar Phelphs Company, "manufacturer of straw hats."  The article said the firm intended to "convert the hotel into a mercantile structure."

 from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

With the loss of significant income-producing square footage, the operation, like a kudzu vine, again expanded southward.  In 1922 The Caterer reported, "The Knott Hotels will add 150 rooms to the Hotel Albert...The annex will be ready for the fall."  The six-story building, at the northeast corner of University Place and 10th Street opened in 1924.  Designed by William L. Bottomley with Sugarman, Hess & Berger, it, too, did not attempt to meld into the earlier structures.

An announcement in The New York Evening Post informed the public, "We have opened [a] new addition of 119 rooms in Hotel Albert.  This addition faces Southwest at corner of University Place and 10th Street."  The "permanent occupancy" rooms and baths rented for $75 to $100 a month.  (The most expensive rent equal to $1,840 in 2026.)

By the 1960s, rooms in the Hotel Albert were rented by the week.  An advertisement in July 1970 listed the rents for a room with private back starting at $40 a week, and for rooms with shared baths starting at $23.

An article in The Villager on August 28, 1969, recounted the hotel's celebrated guests over the decades.  "It is believed that Jennie Lind, Edwin Booth and Thomas Edison were patrons of the hotel," said the article.  At the time of that article, embedded letters spelling out "Hotel St. Stephen" were still visible in the stone sidewalk on East 11th Street.

The article missed a few names.  Decades later The New York Times columnist Christopher Gray would recall,

Hart Crane wrote part of his 1930 poem "The Bridge" while there, and Thomas Wolfe used it as inspiration for the Hotel Leopold in his 1935 novel "Of Time and the River...It became the crash pad for rock musicians, checking in the Electric Flag, Canned Heat, Cream, Paul Butterfield and the Blues Project.

In 1975, the Rockrose Development Corporation acquired the complex.  It evicted the residents and on December 30, 1976, The Villager reported that the developer "is trying to recapture, if not its most glamorous past, at least a touch of the elegance that was associated with the Hotel Albert a half-century ago."  The now-vacant buildings, said the article, "are being renovated into luxury apartments for what the developers call 'brownstone-type' living with the advantages of doormen and elevators."

The architecturally dissimilar buildings that made up the Hotel Albert retained the historic name following the renovation.  Originally rental apartments, the Albert became a co-op in 1984.

photographs by the author