The Lost Hotel Rector - 1500 Broadway

 

The American Architect, January 18, 1911 (copyright expired)

The elegant Rector's restaurant on Broadway between 43rd and 44th Street had been a favorite of well-heeled theater goers for a decade in 1909 when Charles Rector made plans to demolish his building to make way for a hotel.  Designed by D. H. Burnham & Co., it would rise 16 stories.  Its Beaux Arts design would feature a three-story stone base, a middle section clad in red brick, and a stone balustrade that girded the "ornamental crown supporting a curved Mansard roof," as described by The New York Architect.

D. H. Burnham & Co. released a rendering of the proposed structure in 1910.  Record & Guide, February 19, 1910 (copyright expired)

Construction progressed with blinding speed.  The New York Architect commented in its February 1911 issue, "The rapidity of its construction has been the wonder and marvel of the passer-by."  The Rector's restaurant closed on January 31, 1910 and on December 27, 1910 the hotel and new restaurant were opened.  In February 1911, Architects' & Builders' Magazine noted, "This hotel is essentially a transient hotel and has 250 guest rooms and baths."  Rector had reserved ample space for his famous restaurant.  The article said, "The main floor which extends across the whole Broadway front, is given up to the main restaurant."

The impressive restaurant space was two floors in height.  It had "a ceiling in gold leaf, with walls finished in a soft French gray, with red draperies."  Each of the crystal chandeliers, according to Architects' & Builders' Magazine, "weigh approximately one ton each."  

Two views of the main restaurant.  Architects' & Builders' Magazine, February 1911 (copyright expired)

R. Wallace & Sons Manufacturing Company had provided the restaurant's 16,000 pieces of silverware and 550 pieces of gold plate for the banquet rooms.  G. D. A. Limoges supplied the 30,000 pieces of china.

Sharing the first floor with the restaurant were four banquet rooms and the lobby.  "The upper floors are devoted to the guest rooms, which may be connected, if so desired," said Architects' & Builders' Magazine.

The lobby.  Architects' & Builders' Magazine, February 1911 (copyright expired)

Construction cost $3 million.  In the level below the restaurant were a large café and bar.  On December 25, 1910, The New York Times reported, "The main entrance is on Forty-fourth Street, with the women's parlor on the left and the men's writing room on the right of the entrance.  The restaurant entrance is on the Broadway side of the building."  The article added, "One novel feature will be the checking of coats and hats in the vestibule leading to the restaurant and then lowering them out of sight by specially constructed elevators into coat rooms situated on the floor below."

The restaurant, entered on Broadway (right), engulfed half of the main floor.  The New York Architect, February 1911 (copyright expired)

An advertisement on December 27 called the Hotel Rector, "one of the most complete and beautiful hotel structures ever erected."  A double room with bath ranged from $5 to $8 per night--an affordable $265 for the more expensive by 2024 conversion.

In September 1912, Charlotte Poillon and Veniuska La Geaux sued the Hotel Rector for $50,000 (about $1.5 million today).  According to Poillon, "she went into the restaurant and ordered food for herself and her companion, Miss La Greaux, but before the food was served an agent of the hotel refused to permit her to be served."  The Sun reported the two identical complaints claimed that the women entered "in a quiet and orderly manner," and the incident had "held them up to scorn and contempt."

The problem was that Charlotte was dressed as a man.  The hotel's attorney argued, "This plaintiff was in the habit of dressing and did dress upon the day in question in masculine attire, and thereby constantly attracted the attention and notice of the guests in the restaurant, some of whom resented her presence."  Charlotte Poillon's suit was issued from behind bars.  Because cross-dressing was a jailable offense at the time, she had "been arrested and convicted and served a term of imprisonment," according to The Evening World on September 4.

A hand-colored postcard from around 1911 advertised the hotel.  

A year before Rector's new restaurant opened, The Girl From Rector's opened on Broadway.  A sex farce, it involved couples entangled in a series of adulterous affairs and was considered by some critics as indecent.  The play seriously affected the restaurant's reputation and in May 1913, Charles Rector declared bankruptcy.

The newly formed Hotel Claridge Company, Inc. purchased the property.  An announcement in the New-York Tribune on September 17, 1913 declared:

Announcement--What was formerly the Hotel Rector at Forty-fourth Street and Broadway is now the Hotel Claridge.

The remodeled hotel opened on November 1, 1913.  The New York Times reported, "when the big restaurant was thrown open to the public for the first time in its new form...visitors found what seemed to be a brand new hotel."  The grand staircase to the restaurant on the Broadway side had been closed off.  The article said the restaurant had been "completely redecorated" and was now "reached only from the lobby of the hotel."

Before the motion picture industry moved to California, New York was the center of the silent film business.  On October 19, 1919, the New-York Tribune reported, "D. W. Griffith is using the Hotel Claridge to rehearse in while awaiting the installation of the heating apparatus in his new studio."

The largest of the banquet rooms.  The New York Architect, February 1911 (copyright expired)

While the director was dealing with heating problems, the operators of the Hotel Claridge were faced with a far more serious worry: Prohibition.  On July 1, 1919, The Sun quoted manager William H. Turner, who said, "We will not sell a drop of liquor after midnight.  We expect to do a fair business in soft drinks, but are going to stay within the law."

Two weeks later, The Sun reported, "The bar in the handsome Hotel Claridge, formerly Rectors, is to be converted into a candy shop and soda dispensing room at an estimated cost of $5,000."  The ploy, however, failed when other Times Square hotels violated the Prohibition rules and surreptitiously sold liquor.  On June 25, 1922, The New York Times reported, "Prohibition has put the Hotel Claridge...out of business, according to its owner, Lucius M. Boomer."  Boomer told the newspaper he "had tried to live up to every letter of the prohibition laws with the result that he found his patronage lured away to restaurants and other places in the neighborhood where liquor was sold."

Cleveland Ohio real estate operator Morris M. Glaser signed a $5 million, 21-year lease on the property.  He announced that the ground floor would be converted to retail space and the upper floors to "bachelor apartments."  

Construction began almost immediately.  Beams were removed in the converting of the ground floor to vast retail spaces.  It resulted in disaster on August 21, 1922.  At 2:00 that afternoon, the second floor collapsed.  The Evening World reported, "A dozen or more workmen were buried in the debris that piled up on the first floor level."  Three of the men were seriously injured and hospitalized, while their foreman, Mike Marmolsen, was killed.

In reporting on the accident, the newspaper reiterated, "The Claridge...was forced out of the hotel business because the restaurant, one of the most elaborately decorated in the city, could not compete with neighboring eating places that were selling liquor."

The term "bachelor apartments" meant that the suites had no kitchens.  The residents of the remodeled Claridge were not always on the right side of the law.  Shortly after renovations were completed, officials raided a reported gambling parlor in a ninth floor suite.  Just before 5:00 on the afternoon of December 28, 1922, three detectives broke in, "after kicking and pounding the door," reported The New York Times.  "The detectives emerged with thirteen well dressed prisoners, most of them carrying canes and wearing fur-liked coats."  Three of those arrested were charged with "keeping and maintaining the hotel suite for gambling purposes" and the others were charged with "generally disorderly conduct."

Two nightclub hostesses, Eva Goldstein and Ida Shaw, shared a suite on the third floor in 1929.  When Eva came home at 5:30 on the morning of August 13, Ida was asleep.  Shortly afterward, Eva Goldstein fell two floors to the roof of a one-story extension.  When she came to at the hospital, "she said she could not remember how she had fallen," reported The New York Times.  She fully recovered.

On a single day, February 5, 1933, three important deals took place involving the Claridge property.  Herbert Muller took over the lease of the hotel portion and announced he planned "extensive changes in the furnishings and equipment of the hotel," according to The New York Times.  Samuel Briat took over the ground floor for a branch of his men's furnishings stores, and Radio Station WEVD leased space on the top floor for a broadcasting studio.

In 1941, a massive Camel cigarettes billboard was plastered across the second floor of the Broadway facade.  It became a sort of landmark in its own right because of the man in a fedora it displayed who constantly blew "smoke rings" of water vapor.  The ad would remain until 1966.

The "smoke" blowing billboard was photographed by Willem van de Poll in June 1948.

The second floor was leased to an unexpected tenant in September 1949.  The Museum of Science and Industry had been located at Rockefeller Center since 1936.  Renamed the New York Hall of Science, it would take up about 11,000 square feet," according to The Times, and opened on October 20.

Fifteen years later, on May 21, 1964, The New York Times reported that Douglas Leigh, Inc. had purchased the Claridge Hotel, "a Times Square landmark for 50 years and once the home of Rector's Restaurant."  Douglas Leigh announced he would "rent the lower floors for stores, a restaurant or exhibit space, and the upper stories for showrooms, offices and meeting rooms."

Despite Leigh's ambitious plans, just six years later the Hotel Claridge was demolished to make way for 1500 Broadway, designed by Leo Kornblath, which was completed in 1972.

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The 1906 John Wanamaker Annex -- No. 770 Broadway

photo by Alice Lum

Having started business in 1823 as an Irish immigrant with a small lace and linens shop, Alexander Turney Stewart was among the wealthiest men in the United States by 1848.   That year he built a magnificent emporium dubbed the Marble Palace at the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street.  His was the largest such store in the world and he was not done yet.

In 1862 Stewart spent an astronomical $2.5 million dollars—about $45 million today—to erect an uptown branch on Broadway extending back to Fourth Avenue along 10^th Street.  His 6-story cast iron structure, designed by John Kellum, was built to be fireproof and the new technology allowed larger window area and, therefore, increased daylight inside.

The gargantuan store became known as the Iron Palace and The New York Tribune called the two buildings “the proudest monuments of commercial enterprise in the country.”  In 1870 the store was enlarged, now filling the entire block from 10^th to 9^th Street.

The original, extended building covered the entire block in 1870 -- NYPL Collection

 Stewart died in 1876 but the A. T. Stewart & Co. store on Broadway and 10^th Street continued on for six years.   Hilton, Hughes & Co. took over the operation in 1882 but failed four years later.  In November 1896 Philadelphia retailer John Wanamaker opened his New York operation in the building.    And if Alexander Stewart thought big, John Wanamaker thought bigger.

Almost immediately Wanamaker began buying up lots on the block south of the store.  By the end of 1902 he had successfully obtained the entire block from 8^th to 9^th Street, Broadway through 4^th Avenue.  The New York Times announced on December 21 “The entire site…is now in Mr. Wanamaker’s control and it is assumed that the erection of the new building will not be deferred for any length of time.”

The newspaper noted that the proposed, block-encompassing structure, would require the demolition of multiple buildings, including the Germania Theatre on 8^th Street.  “Some of these buildings are modern, substantially built structures, notably the one at the northeast corner of Broadway and Eighth Street.”

The Annex doubled the height of the original Stewart store in the foreground -- Wanamaker's The Store of New York, 1916 - copyright expired

A year later construction started on the immense 12-story emporium designed by the Chicago architectural firm D. H. Burnham & Co.  It would take three years for the structure to be completed.   The stately Italian Renaissance building clad in terra cotta cost $3.5 million. It was the product of three years of research into department store design throughout the United States and Europe.  The old Stewart building was connected to the “Annex” by an enclosed bridge, called The Bridge of Progress, and a tunnel under 9^th Street. 

The Bridge of Progress linked the two stores -- Wanamaker's The Store of New York, 1916 - copyright expired

The original building was now used for women’s merchandise only; the new building sold menswear, and furnishings and decorations for the home.  The New-York Tribune on April 22, 1906 called the new structure “one of the most elaborately fitted up and furnished department stores in the United States, if not in the world.”  It would be a store like no other.

An enormous rotunda rose through the height of the building with a grand “horseshoe stairway” leading up to the second floor.   On this floor pianos and organs were displayed in period-decorated rooms.  “For instance,” reported The Tribune, “the Emerson room is decorated in Louis XIV style, while the Knabe room is in the Flemish style.  All the decorations are in keeping in each room, even including the chandeliers and furniture.  There are rooms decorated in Louis XV, Louis XVI, Moorish, Renaissance and Empire, as well as Old Dutch.”

The sumptuous Rotunda rose through the center of the store.  The carpeted Horseshoe Stairway accessed the second floor.  Wanamaker's The Store of New York, 1916 - copyright expired

The combined old and new buildings now offered the shopper a full thirty-two acres of floor space.  The store required a staff of 5,000 to 8,000 employees depending on the season.  But the additional conveniences, not necessarily related to shopping, were even more impressive.   There was a Guides’ Office where confused shoppers could procure a personal guide to “conduct visitors about the store and to serve the shopper in every possible way,” as pointed out in Wanamaker's 1916 New York, Metropolis of the World, brochure.   The booklet added that “The entire Wanamaker store is dotted with quiet places for the comfort and convenience of guests.  Writing desks, rest rooms and retiring rooms are conveniently distributed, and are welcome place for rest when one slightly tires of shopping.”

The restaurant could feed 1,000 tired shoppers -- Wanamaker's The Store of New York, 1916 - copyright expired

For those “slightly tired of shopping,” there was also the auditorium.  With a seating capacity of 1,300 and rising three stories it was one of the largest theaters in New York.   Murals were painted by Frederick K.Frieseke, of the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts of Paris.  Here the Austin organ not only had 64 stops, but two chimes of bells, a snare drum, kettle drums, cymbals and triangle.  Free, nearly daily concerts were offered for shoppers.

There were also a golf school, a restaurant capable of serving over 1,000, a telegraph service, a post office, theater ticket office, railroad ticket office, Red Cross Headquarters, and hair salon.  To give homeowners ideas on decorating, a two-story house was incorporated into the store.  The Wanamaker booklet described The House Palatial as “containing twenty-four rooms designed in correct period or modern style, and every room in the house obviously different in character, although all help to make up a harmonious whole.  It represents the best of the house designing, furnishing and decorative arts.”  More than a million people every year visited The House Palatial.

A room in The House Palatial in 1916 -- Wanamaker's The Store of New York, 1916 - copyright expired

In the basement was a subway station—a supreme convenience for shoppers.  The Meridien Morning Record said “…the Subway train sets you down in Wanamaker’s.  You may come in a driving rainstorm and not get a drop of water at any point—no need to carry an umbrella or wear a raincoat…It has revolutionized the convenience of shopping.”

The up-to-date features of the building proved themselves when a small fire broke out near the pipe organ in the auditorium on March 16, 1918.  The automatic alarm and sprinkler system were set off and The Times reported that “the fire was out before fire apparatus arrived.”

Three stories high, the Auditorium was decorated with frescoes -- Wanamaker's The Store of New York, 1916 - copyright expired

On April 24, 1928 the section of 9^th Street between Broadway and 4^th Avenue that separated the old and new Wanamaker buildings was renamed by the Board of Aldermen to Wanamaker Place.   The gesture was in honor of the public services of the late Rodman Wanamaker; however it also paid tribute to the gargantuan retail establishment that straddled the street.

By the middle of the 20^th century the shopping district had moved northward.   Rather than move with it, Wanamaker decided in 1954 to simply close the business.  Although 1,500 unionized employees voted unanimously to try to purchase the business as a partnership with the help of investment bankers, the venture did not materialize.

photo by Alice Lum

On closing day, December 18, 1954, a writer for The New York Times reminisced.  “But to some of us at least it seemed more than a store.  It had an air of sober respectability, of gentility, of courtesy, of the leisure of time passed, of spaciousness appropriate to the carriage trade…One did not go down there, in later years, expecting to shop around in other stores also.  It was a trip to Wanamaker’s and nowhere else…The lady of the house never wondered whether anything wrong would be made right at Wanamaker’s…For the customers, for the employes—and today is, of course, a particularly sad day for them—a chapter closes, and with regret.”

The upper floors were lavished with elaborate terra cotta detailing -- photo by Alice Lum

Nine days later crowds of people lined the sidewalks along Union Square as S. Klein’s department store began selling off the Wanamaker goods.   The firm had purchased $2.5 million worth of stock and offered it to the public at discounted prices.  In the meantime, a real estate syndicate purchased the once-proud Wanamaker buildings.  No. 770 Broadway, the Annex, was converted to an office building and quickly filled with occupants.  In 1956 Chase Manhattan Bank leased three full floors and the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company took the 7^th and half of the 6^th Floor.

As for Alexander Stewarts magnificent Iron Palace of a century earlier, plans were set to demolish it.   But before the wreckers could start, a fire broke out.  John Kellum’s fireproof structure proved to be that.  The flames raged out of control for a full 24-hours before firefighters were able to extinguish it.   Afterwards, surrounding the gutted remains, the noble cast iron façade still stood. 

After the ruins were removed an uninspiring white-brick apartment building was constructed in its place in 1960.   The 21-story structure was named with a nod to the original store—the Stewart House.

The terra cotta-clad annex survives as an office building -- photo by Alice Lum

The Wanamaker “Annex” survives today as 770 Broadway.   The subway station that unloaded shoppers into one of the nation’s most renowned retail establishments now deposits them into a K-Mart.   Among its many tenants are the corporate headquarters of AOL, Vornado and J. Crew.

Today all the thoughts of organ concerts in a splendid auditorium, an Oriental Shop that sold “mandarin embroideries and fascinating bronzes,” and the Burlington Arcade that reproduced the arcade in Piccadilly, London are gone.  The lone reminder of the once-magnificent department store is the green-and-white street sign on the corner:  Wanamaker Place.