The 1903 67th Street Studios Building -- 27 West 67th Street

In 1903 artist V. V. Sewell mulled “people have no conception of how difficult it is for one to find a suitable studio in New York.”  It was a problem that had prompted James Boorman Johnston to erect the famous 10^th Street Studios Building in Greenwich Village nearly half a century earlier, in 1858.  His was the first step in the movement of artist residence-workspace buildings that would gain momentum at the turn of the century.

In July 1901 three artists—Frank V. D. Du Mond, Henry W. Ranger, and Louis Paul Dessar—incorporated the Sixty-Seventh Street Studio Building Association with capital of $25,000.  The well-established artists chose a rather questionable block on which to construct their cooperative studio building—West 67^th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.  Despite its proximity to the Park, it was lined with stables and other service buildings and described by the New-York Tribune as “the center of a negro settlement.”  Yet these were minor obstacles when compared to the unblocked northern light so important to painters.

Henry W. Ranger had initiated the project and recruited Dumond and Dessar as the initial stockholders.  He was also reportedly highly involved in the layouts of the apartment-studios.  Architects Simonson & Sturgis were given the commission for the 14-story building.  They turned to the currently popular Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau styles for the brick and terra cotta façade. 

Construction was nearing completion on Christmas Day 1902 when disaster occurred.  William Allen was employed by the contractor, W. J. Taylor, as a watchman.  He was given a room on the ground floor with an iron stove for warmth.

One of Allen’s responsibilities was the care of the little heating pots located throughout the building to keep the new plaster from freezing.  On December 26 The New York Times reported “There were pots of this kind on the third, fifth, and tenth floors last night.”

Just before midnight Allen was making his rounds.  He was on the 10^th floor when he smelled smoke.  Before he could find the source on the first floor, a passerby saw the flames and turned in an alarm.  Firemen soon arrived and extinguished the fire; but not before $3,500 worth of damages to woodwork and plaster was done.

While police attributed the blaze to Allen’s stove becoming overheated, the watchman was positive it was arson and a witness agreed.  William Martin, a watchman across the street, told reporters that “just at the time the fire started he heard the two fox terriers of the watchman on the ground floor barking furiously…He thinks someone got into the watchman’s rooms and started the blaze.”

The Times added “Allen is certain some one got in and set the fire.  He says his stove was one which was so set that it could not have started a fire in the room.”

The damages were repaired and by the end of March the building was nearly finished.  On March 27, 1903 The New York Times reported “No. 27 West Sixty-seventh Street is sufficiently complete, so that a dozen artists are already ensconsed [sic] therein, with more to come.”

The fire was not the only problem during construction.  “There have been the usual delays—trouble with the foundations, trouble from strikes, trouble about the architects—but at last the sober-looking pile (with its heavy-browed, low entrance, its marble vestibule decorated by Sewell with two friezes of youths on caracoling horses, its green painted casements and tall façade on red and black brick is taking on the animation of a hive of bees, as one studio after another receives its married couple or its bachelor occupant.”

 

A magnificent art glass lamp--a hybrid of Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau--clings to the undressed stone by slender tendril-like supports.

While the stone-and-brick “heavy browed” entrance was rather imposing with the address carved into shields and a magnificent art glass lamp with tendril-like supports on a purposely undressed stone base; the bulk of the façade was minimally decorated.  The architects relied instead on recessed sections and variation in colors and materials to provide dimension and interest.

The New York Times was not impressed.  “The front of the Sixty-seventh Street studios is not a thing of beauty, though their inner arrangement may be a joy forever.  The model might have been a plain or even ugly Jacobean house or a somewhat ornate factory. This has been drawn up into the air after the fashion of Manhattan in order to gain many floors, but the imagination of the architect has not kept pace with the upward expansion.”

The Times’ critic felt that the weight of the design gave the impression of flattening the arches and crushing the entrance.  He proclaimed the effect “depressing” and it was “not relieved by the colors chosen for the facing of brick.”

The absence of nearby structures gave the back of the building access to uninterrupted northern light. photo by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

Nevertheless, the newspaper was taken with the resourceful layouts inside.  “Great ingenuity has been expended on the problem of giving each apartment a well-lighted studio large or small.  In some cases a tenant by taking two apartments and eliminating the dividing wall has doubled the size of his working room.”

The design did not rely on overt ornamentation; but on varying colors of brick and three-dimensional effects of recesses within recesses.

There were 14 two-story, 18-foot high studios flooded with northern light.  Duplex living areas were to the front.  These consisted of a dining room, study, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and a balcony that looked down into the studio.  There were an additional 20 smaller units in the rear, two per floor.

The New-York Herald glowed in its assessment.  “These Sixty-seventh street studios have brought domesticity—wives, babies and social life—into the studios.  Here are all the conditions for comfortable living—electric lights, private baths, salons, kitchens, bedrooms, as well as lofty studios—and all the machinery for ambitious as well as private life.”

The building was formally opened at a reception on the afternoon of April 5, 1903.  The New York Times reminded its readers at the time “This is the edifice erected by a knot of painters who found it difficult to get good studios in Manhattan.”

The Sixty-Seventh Street Studios welcomed an esteemed list of residents.  Among the first were, of course, Dessar, Ranger and Du Mond; joined by Robert W. Vonnoh, F. Childe Hassam, Robert V. V. Sewell (who executed the lobby frescoes), Charles Naegele, and sculptress Bessie Potter Vonnoh and her husband, impressionist painter Robert.

American Art News described the Vonnoh apartments on October 21, 1905.  “Both these studios are unusually large and well lighted and built under their owner’s supervision, with every convenience and comfort.  Mr. Vonnoh’s studio is beautifully finished with rare hangings, rugs, and furniture.  Mrs. Vonnoh’s is most artistic and interesting, though more plainly furnished than that of her husband, as is suited to her work as a sculptress.”

Bessie Potter Vonnoh and Robert Vonnoh -- photo Archives of American Art

In November 1903 The School of Decorative and Applied Art opened in the building.  Affiliated with the New York School of Art, it was supervised by Eliza A. Sargent.  Drawing and Manual Training Journal explained its purpose was “to meet the demands of the times that art, the crafts and the handicrafts be correlated.”

English-born sculptor Samuel J. Kitson died after a brief illness in 1904.  At the time he was working on a model for a bronze statue, “Christ, the Light of the World.”  The figure had been finished but it was his widow, Anne Meredith Kitson, who completed the base.  The model was awarded the Pope’s Gold Medal for Sculpture in 1906.  Anne stayed on in the studio, surrounded by models of her husband’s best works.

Artists taking space in the Sixty-Seventh Street Studios were not struggling.  They had taken their places in the art world and, in many cases, in society.  Anne Meredith Kitson herself was descended from an old New England family.  Among her impressive list of friends, past and current, were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Louisa May Alcott, Edwin Booth, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Samuel J. Tilden, General Philip H. Sheridan, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Alexander Graham Bell, and William McKinley.

Italian-born Pilade Bertieri took a studio in October 1905.  The New York Times noted that he “has painted portraits of several well-known society people…and will receive on Saturdays.  Mr. Bertieri spent the Summer at Newport.”

Like Anne Kitson, Cadwallader L. Washburn did not achieve his place in society, he was born into it.  Technology Review, in 1906, called him “the scion of an old and well-known family, and a wealthy young man to boot.”  The journal noted “He has been everywhere, all over Europe a score of times, to the Orient, across the Himalayas, and down into the heart of Africa.”

Washburn studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but turned his focus to art.  He earned the nickname the “Silent Artist.”   He worked at his easel alone in his studio here, “with never a sound to break the stillness save the plushing of his damp brushes upon the canvas or the delicate scratching of his etcher’s point,” wrote Technology Review.

The quiet was a result of Washburn’s inability to hear.  He had been a deaf-mute since the age of three.  “And yet, in spite of his affliction, there is probably no artist in all that life-loving and life-living profession who lives a fuller life, or one filled with a greater variety of enjoyment, than does Mr. Washburn.  When his workday is over, he diverts himself with society.”

Equally prominent was artist George Henry Clements and his family.  The landscape painter’s apartment was the scene of debutante entertainments in 1910 when daughter Anna was introduced to society.  They ended with a supper and theater party on Monday, December 5.  The joy of that occasion turned to grief only 11 days later when Anna’s 21-year old brother, Brent Dixwell Clements, died of pneumonia in the apartment.

Other artists in the building at the time included Ray Lindham, who had held an exhibition in his studio in February that year; portrait artist Lawrence Nelson; and Benjamin A. Morton.

Theodore Pembrook was an original resident and, like Cadwallader Washburn, was born into privilege.  On February 16, 1911 The Potter, Glass & Brass Salesman noted “The Pembrooks were wealthy and their home became a treasure house stored with the products of centuries of European genius.  Into this atmosphere the boy was born who was destined to become one of the foremost American artists.”

In 1914 F. Childe Hassam set a legal precedent when his law suit against the United States Express Company was decided.  In 1905 he had send a painting, “A Rainy Day in Washington Square,” to Denver to be exhibited.  On June 3 the express company was instructed to return the artwork to Hassam.

A worker mislabeled the package, sending it to No. 27 West 27^th Street, an entrance to the Metropolitan Hotel.  The Sun later reported “An employee of the hotel signed the receipt for it and it remained unclaimed at the hotel.”

While F. Childe Hassam tried in vain to discover what had become of his missing painting, it sat behind the hotel’s desk for months.  An employee testified that it was still there on May 1, 1906 when he left the hotel’s employment.  “Shortly afterward the hotel was torn down and its contents sold,” reported The Sun.

On July 10, 1914 the court ruled in favor of the artist, granting him the $1,174 for the lost painting.  The Sun reported “The court holds that the express company is liable because the shipment was delivered at an address where the person to whom the shipment was made was not known.”

The New York Times chimed in, saying “What became of the picture is unknown.  It lay behind the desk in the hotel office until the building was abandoned.  In the course of a century or two, if Mr. Hassam takes rank as an ‘old master,’ the picture will doubtless be dug up and become the subject of debates as to whether it is a ‘fake’ or an original.”

Henry Ward Ranger died in the building he had conceived at the age of 58 on November 7, 1916.  His will directed that his paintings be presented to art institutions or galleries “in America having galleries open to the public.”  The remainder of his estate went to the National Academy of Design.

A year later, Theodore Kenyon Pembrook died in his apartment where he had lived for nearly 15 years.  An art broker, Charles H. Boynton, said Pembrook was often referred to as the “hermit artist” because “he seldom showed interest in anything outside his studio.”  The artist rarely sold his work, living off his inheritance.

On the evening of Thursday, September 20, 1917 Pembrook consulted with Charles Boynton about donating about a dozen of his landscapes for the war effort.  After the broker left, it appeared that Pembrook took up working on a painting.

“Pembrook, who had been troubled with a weak heart for some time had apparently tired of painting, and, still wearing his painter’s smock, he had taken a novel and lay down on a couch to rest and read,” surmised The New York Times later.

When the building’s janitor had not seen the 52-year old for two days, he entered the studio.  There he found Pembrook’s body on the couch with his brushes at his side.

Italian-born artist Luigi Curci shared a studio with his brother, Gennaro Curci in 1918.  The speeding fine of $30 that Gennaro incurred for driving an automobile at 30 miles an hour on Broadway in July that year was nothing compared to the problems that were to come.

Luigi was married to the successful operatic prima donna Madame Amelita Galli-Curci.  Things were not going well for the couple.  On September 4, 1918 the New-York Tribune reported that the pair had separated and each was suing the other.

Curci alleged that his wife’s manager and accompanist had alienated her affections.  He sued them for $250,000 damages—nearly $4 million in 2015.   Madame Galli-Curci, at the same time, instructed her attorneys to remove everything from the Sixty-Seventh Street Studios apartment.  She valued the contents at $17,000 and said they included “tapestry panels, rugs, a Capo di Monte vase, all the singer’s wearing apparel in the house, and the furnishings of a modern apartment.”

She issued a statement which said that since their marriage in 1908 she had earned all the money and he, “practically nothing.”  The Tribune advised “Also, for the last two years, she added, her husband’s brother, Gennaro, has looked to her for support.”

She said that when she returned from a European tour in 1917 she found her bank account nearly empty.  She was forced to change banks and revoke her husband’s access.  According to The New York Times “Galli-Curci at once issued a statement branding her husband’s charges as ‘absurd,’ and made for the purpose of humiliating her.”

By 1927 American novelist Fannie Hurst was living here.  Her works often dealt with women as victims of social and economic discrimination.  Two of her novels, Back Street and Imitation of Life would become the bases of successful screen plays.

Her societal interests were reflected in her activities, often taking place in the studio.  On March 7, 1927, for instance, she hosted a committee meeting of the National Health Circle for Colored People, Inc.  Five years later, in March 1932, she addressed a group of convicts on Welfare Island.  Several days later she received a knock on her door in the Sixty-Seventh Street Studios. 

The man at her door said he had heard her speech on that Sunday.  According to The Times he “described himself as Frank Brown, a newly released convict.  He said he could get a job as a musician if he had evening clothes.”

Fannie Hurst was sympathetic to the needs of society; but she was no fool.  “Miss Hurst checked up his story, found that he was an impostor, and refused to aid him,” reported The Times.

Fannie Hurst lived in the Studios Building for years -- photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

Frank V. Du Mond, one of the founders of the studios, was still here at the time.  On June 3 his daughter was married at the family’s country estate, Grassy Hill, in Lyme, Connecticut.  Also still here was Anne Meredith Kitson, after three decades.

Over the years several art patrons and galleries had made offers to buy the “Christ, the Light of the World” sculpture and have it cast.  The Times would later explain “But Mrs. Kitson declined all offers, expressing the desire to place it where she thought it would be most appreciated.”

Finally she found the right place in 1936 when she was introduced to Father Bernard R. Hubbard.  Called by some the “glacier priest,” he was also a scientist and explorer and had as his parish the 190 Eskimo inhabitants of King Island in the Bering Sea.  Father Hubbard had for months been seeking an appropriate statue for the desolate island “as a symbol to Christians of Christ’s love, even for the atheistic Soviets,” as explained by The New York Times, and to “commemorate the heroism of Catholic missionaries working among the Eskimos.”

Anne Kitson was exhilarated at having found the perfect spot for her husband’s masterpiece.  The 82-year old paid for and oversaw the arrangements for the casting, packing and shipping of the statue.   But on November 7, 1937, The Times reported “The exertion proved too much for her strength, she became ill and died on Holy Thursday.  Had she lived another week she would have seen her statue cast in bronze and started on its long journey to Alaska.”

The Sixth-Seventh Street Studios continued to be the home of established artists for decades, including Harrison Cady who moved into his eight-room studio in 1942.  By the 21^st century the unusual spaces had attracted those not involved in the arts, as well.   What had not changed was the financial status of the occupants.  When graphic designer Milton Glaser sold his duplex in 2007 the price tag was $4.1 million.

The striking façade of the Sixty-Seventh Street Studios, once considered “depressing” by one critic, is happily pristine.  And, almost miraculously, the marvelous art glass lamp over the entrance survives.

photographs by the author

C.P.H. Gilbert's No. 240 West 23rd Street

By the 1880s West 23^rd Street from Fifth to Eighth Avenue was the center of Manhattan’s entertainment district.  The thoroughfare was dotted with music halls and theaters between Fifth and Eighth Avenues.  Some were quite grand like the white marble Grand Opera House on the northwest corner of Eighth Avenue and Booth’s Shakespearean Theatre at the southeast corner of Sixth Avenue; others were noisier and more robust like Koster & Bial’s Music Hall.

The commodious brick and brownstone homes that lined the street at the time of the Civil War had by now been either razed or converted for business purposes.  No. 240 West 23^rd Street, once the four-story home of a wealthy and respected physician, was now the Hotel Byron.  In 1895 the Vegetarian Restaurant No. 1 opened in the hotel, much to the delight of those following the trendy movement.

But as the 20^th century neared, the theaters and music halls began moving northward to Longacre Square—later renamed Times Square.  In their place came loft and office buildings.

Prominent among the real estate operators in the Chelsea area was the Cushman family.  They traced their American roots to Robert Cushman who landed in Plymouth on the Fortune in 1621.  It was Don Alonzo Cushman who began the family tradition of real estate when he erected rows of speculative, high-end homes in the 1830s on what had been the family estate of Clement Clarke Moore.

On June 24, 1898 The New York Times reported that Joseph W. Cushman had purchased the two “four-story business buildings” at Nos. 240 and 242 West 23^rd Street.   Plans for a seven-story “brick store” were soon filed by the 37-year old architect C. P. H. Gilbert.  The resultant building would be much more than a brick store.

Although he is best remembered today for the lavish mansions he designed for Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens—like F. W. Woolworth, Harry F. Sinclair and Otto H. Kahn—Gilbert was responsible for a wide-variety of structures and worked with Cushman several times.    His loft and store building at No. 240 West 23^rd Street, completed in 1899, was a riot of materials, styles and ornamentation, the style of which the AIA Guide to New York City could only deem “eclectic.”

Gilbert adorned the façade with surprising decorative elements that were at the same time grand and playful.  Garlands and festoons, along with reserved engaged columns within the openings were typical of the period.  But grimacing demon faces along the top cornice, grinning bearded men above the sixth floor, and the show-stopping Renaissance-inspired piers at the second floor with handsome full-relief rams heads took the building well beyond the ordinary.

Joseph W. Cushman and his brother, James Stewart Cushman, moved their two businesses into the building.  Not only did they operate the J. W. Cushman & Co real estate firm; but they were principals in the Cushman & Denison Mfg. Co., makers of office equipment like rubber stamps and numbering machines.

Among Cushman & Denison's products was the Follett numbering machine -- Walden's Stationery and Printer, January 25, 1904 (copyright expired)

Cushman’s other initial tenants were A. P. Babcock’s perfume factory on the fifth floor; and the Automatic Vending Company on the fourth.  On July 18, 1900 the other floors of the recently-completed building were still unleased.

The manufacture of perfume required highly volatile ingredients and they nearly caused the destruction of the new building that night.  The last of the Babcock workmen were cleaning up at the end of the workday, at around 5:40, when there was a small explosion.  The panicked men ran out of the building.

Fire fighters arrived; but this was no ordinary loft fire.  As they fought the blaze, one vat of chemicals after another exploded.  The New York Times reported “Many of the explosions were loud and sent streams of flame here and there, and started a fire on the fourth floor.”

Captain Coleman of Truck No. 12 was on the fourth floor with 15 other firemen.   They had just about extinguished the fire on this floor when a massive explosion occurred on the Babcock floor.   The blast blew out the ceiling above them and the force slammed shut all of the fourth floor doors, trapping the heat and dense smoke in around the "dazed" firefighters.

Firemen rushed to their rescue and carried the men to the street.  The Times said “Their clothing was burned and water was thrown on them to extinguish the flames, which had burned them all about the face, hands, bodies, and limbs.”

The blaze was extinguished within an hour; but the fourth floor was wrecked.  Estimates of the damages to Cushman’s new building were around $20,000—nearly $600,000 in 2015 dollars.

Repairs were made and, once again, lofts were rented.  The two Cushman companies remained in the building for years as a broad mix of tenants moved in.   The Cambridge Encyclopedia Co. was here by 1902, publishing educational books like A History of the Precious Metals, and The Middle Ages Revisited.

The Electrical Engineer Institute offered courses in “Engineering, electrical, steam, mechanical drawing.”  An advertisement in the New-York Tribune on November 11, 1906 promised “Easily learned Courses for Home Study.  Low rates for tuition.  Students helped to positions.”

At the same time the Diamond Corset Shield Co. was in the building.  The shields fit over the customer’s corset and were intended to double the user’s corset life and to prevent “wear of your underclothing and waist.”  ("Waist" referred to the popular shirtwaist blouse; not to the women's anatomy.)

New-York Tribune, October 27, 1907 (copyright expired)

Another garment firm, La Mode Garment Co. leased the third floor in 1912.   By now the Cushman real estate firm had changed its name to the Allerton Realty Company.  Two other apparel manufacturers, K. & M. Garment Company and Max H. Rubinstein, maker of dresses, were in the building by 1915.

That year another devastating fire would nearly destroy the building.  No. 240 West 23^rd Street was separated from the Chelsea Hotel by the Third Protestant Reformed Church.  Despite a heavy rainfall on the night of May 21, several guests on the upper floors of the hotel saw flames on the upper floors of No. 240.  The night clerk, H. E. Hayes, left the desk to investigate.  When he looked out an upper floor window “he saw across the church roof a lively blaze underway.”  Both the K. & M. Garment Company and the Rubinstein factory were on fire.

By the time firefighters arrived the two lofts were engulfed.  The Sun reported “The flames had eaten their way through the two floors so much, in fact, that Capt. Ford and seven men of Engine 34, who carried a line of hose to the sixth floor, fell through to the fifth in a heap.”

The Chelsea Hotel guests crowded onto the iron balconies in the pouring rain to watch the spectacle.  The Sun happily reported that the “high pressure apparatus soon made short work of the fire.”  Nevertheless damages amounted to about $6,500.

The Chelsea Neighborhood Association had been in the building for at least seven years in 1917.  Its purpose was to promote “the social, civic, and economic improvement of the Chelsea neighborhood.”  Soon its focus would be on finding jobs for Chelsea residents.

With the United States’ entry into the war in Europe in 1917 the nation found itself with a depleted workforce as thousands of men left for battle.  The Government opened a branch office of the U. S. Employment Service office in No. 240 West 23^rd Street, which worked in cooperation with the Chelsea Neighborhood Association.

By 1918 the need for unskilled workers was critical.  The New-York Tribune reported on August 8 that year, “The government wants 3,000 unskilled workmen at once for employment by the Edgewood Arsenal…near Baltimore.”  Readers were directed to the West 23^rd Street office for applications.

Director of the Public Service Reserve, J. L. Raffetto, stressed “There is an unlimited need of common labor for our war industries today, but the demand at the Edgewood Arsenal is very urgent and we hope that the men will heed our patriotic appeal and come forward at once.”

Out-of-work men were inspired to heed the “patriotic appeal” by the “anti-loafing law” which went into effect in June 1918.   The New-York Tribune explained “The main burden of the new law will fall on the men who are loafers by trade, the men who have dodged necessity and have managed to live without working steadily at any occupation.”

By the new law, inspired by Provost Marshal General Crowder, those who did not take advantage of the thousands of war-related jobs available would be sent into military service.  The tag-line of the law was “work or fight.”

                                                                                 

The Tribune reminded readers about the 23^rd Street employment office and added “Loafers, ‘lounge lizards,’ dancing men and kindred Broadway and Bowery folk will be labeled as such.”

Although the U. S. Employment Service office and the Chelsea Neighborhood Association worked hand-in-hand; their goals were slightly different.  The Employment Service sent workers to war-related situations; while the Chelsea Association’s motto was “Work Where You Live; Live Where You Work.”

In the 11-month period ending in April 1918 the Chelsea Neighborhood Association had found jobs for 3,500 men and women within the Chelsea district.  The Sun, on April 29, 1918 described other efforts.  “The work of the organization has included training for various occupations, Americanization work among Poles and others of foreign birth or parentage, and the operation of health clinics in cooperation with the city Health Department.”

Following the end of the war, activities in No. 240 West 23^rd Street returned to normal.  In 1919 the Combination Soda Fixture Corporation took the ground floor store space; while upstairs the United Toilet Goods Co. moved in.

By 1937 the building was home to the Ansley Radio Corporation, headed by Arthur C. Ansley.  The firm manufactured and sold electric phonographs and radios.  Their combination radio-phonograph, called the Dynaphone, was a rather major piece of furniture.  In 1939 they introduced the electronic piano, which also used the Dynaphone brand name.  That year the company’s huge success resulted in its seeking larger quarters.  In February 1939 it left No. 240 and moved to the Bronx.

The Chelsea neighborhood saw tremendous change throughout the rest of the century; yet C. P. H. Gilbert’s wonderful façade survived.  In February 1984 a conversion to cooperative apartments was completed, following designs of architect David Glatman.  The resulting Arcadia contained 21 units including duplex and triplex apartments and studios.

Glatman and his partner John R. Souto sensitively treated the exterior with a muted green paint on the spandrels and picked out the rams’ heads and faces in gold.  Despite explosions and fires and decades of neighborhood change, the building looks much as it did when it opened in 1899.

photographs by the author

The 1924 Roosevelt Hotel -- Madison Ave at 45th Street

Irving Underhill photographed the newly-completed building in 1924 -- from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

On midnight, January 16, 1920 the selling and manufacture of intoxicants became illegal in the United States.  The arrival of Prohibition, which some thought would reduce crime and domestic violence, and enhance living conditions for all proved just the opposite.  The enormous increase in illegal activities would not be noticeable for some time; but the effect on millions who were suddenly without jobs was immediate.

In Manhattan bartenders, brewery and distillery workers, waitresses, liquor store employees and sommeliers were suddenly out of work.  And Prohibition dealt a heavy and unexpected blow to the cash flow of the city’s grand hotels whose wine cellars were stocked with expensive and rare vintages.

Within months hotels failed.  On July 4, 1920 the New-York Tribune noted that three of New York’s resident hotels, including the Holland House and 20-year old Manhattan House, had shut their doors.   One year after Prohibition went into effect John Jacob Astor closed his elegant Knickerbocker Hotel.

The Tiffany Studios Building stood at Madison Avenue and 45th Street -- photograph by Wurts Bros. from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

And so it was perhaps startling to some when on September 2, 1922 the New-York Tribune announced that a $6 million hotel, 18 stories tall, was being designed by the well-known architectural firm of George B. Post & Sons.

Two months later, on November 25, 1922 both the height and the cost had risen.  The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that demolition had started on the massive brick and stone Tiffany Studios Building on Madison Avenue at 45^th Street where a “palatial hostelry, to be known as the Roosevelt Hotel” was to be built.  The structure had sprouted two more floors and the cost was now estimated at $10 million.

George B. Post & Sons released its rendering in November 1922 (copyright expired)

The project was spearheaded by a syndicate known as the United Hotels Company of America.  The Record & Guide reported on the projected 1,107 rooms and baths, “several spacious restaurants and private dining rooms.” 

Engulfing the entire block from Madison to Vanderbilt Avenue and from 45^th to 46^th Streets, it took advantage of the site directly over the Grand Central tracks.  The Guide noted it “will have an entrance from the Grand Central Terminal, which will be a great advantage to incoming and outgoing railroad passengers.”  In addition, the New-York Tribune noted on November 19 that the hotel was to have “a series of rooms which will be reserved for persons who wish to remain overnight only or for a few hours while waiting for train connections.”

The planners included stores and leased office space along the sidewalk level.  It was an unusual move and according to the 1987 New York 1930, Architecture and Urbanism Between The Two World Wars, was intended to compensate for the lost revenues caused by Prohibition.

Less than five months into construction, the hotel’s leasing agent, Douglas L. Elliman & Co. reported that already more than half of the store space was rented.  Among the “important” leases was signed by the Knox Hat Company, whose upscale store traditionally provided headwear for United States Presidents.

The hotel's massive size was captured in a postcard (copyright expired)

Just under two years after construction began, the Roosevelt Hotel neared completion.  On September 14, 1924 The New York Times noted that, once again, the height and the cost had changed—now 22 stories tall and costing $12 million.  The exterior of the massive brick and stone structure melded with the Adamesque architecture of the other buildings of what was then called “the Grand Central Group;” and later known as “Terminal City.”

But inside, George B. Post & Sons drew from colonial America.  The 42^nd Street vestibule contained a replica of the doorway into St. Paul’s Chapel downtown, built in 1764.  It opened into a lobby dripping with American references.   The architects used Homewood, an 1809 Baltimore mansion, and the New York City Hall for inspiration here.  Iron panels flanking the stairs were copies of those in City Hall.  The iron balcony railings were taken from an old mansion on Irving Place, and the iron rails in the arcades were copied from leaded glass sidelights of various colonial American doorways.

Reproduction Chippendale chairs and colonial details added to the historical motif.

For the 20-foot wide paneled lounge facing Madison Avenue, inspiration was taken from a room of the colonial house in Coventry, Connecticut installed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The New York Times added “A handsome and ornamental office desk screen is based on the original in the Hamilton House (1812), Philadelphia.  ‘Homewood’ provided the designs for the cornice in the ‘working lobby’ and also in the mezzanine balcony.”

Other colonial homes used for inspiration were the 18^th century Octagon House in Washington D. C., Kenmore, a 1753 Virginia mansion, the 1800 Gordon House in Savannah, and the Charleston, South Carolina Gibbs House built in 1752.

A postcard presented an elegant lobby.

The Roosevelt Hotel, named for the late President Theodore Roosevelt, was formally opened on September 22, 1924.  Although The New York Times remarked the following day that “It is equipped with the latest devices for service;” its planners cleverly did not target the millionaires who came and went at the Waldorf-Astoria or Plaza Hotels; but businessmen and visiting families.

When Theodore Roosevelt died, political cartoonist J. N. “Ding” Darling published a cartoon entitled the “Long, Long Trail.”  It depicted the former President in his Rough Rider outfit, waving good-bye as he rode off into the clouds.  On December 8, 1925 a bronze reproduction of the cartoon, four and one-half by six feet, was unveiled in the main lobby of the hotel in the presence of several hundred people, including many of the Roosevelt family.

Earlier that year the Roosevelt Hotel had added an innovative concept—a radio station atop the hotel.  The first transmission from station WRNY was broadcast on the evening of June 12, 1925.  And while the schedule included the expected musical programs “in which operatic singers and Broadway stars” took part, there was also a weekly educational program for high school students interested in science and technology.

On that first night, the venerable politician and attorney Chauncey M. Depew spoke to the children.  He began saying that many of the youthful audience “have made their own radio machines in whole or in part.”  He echoed the feelings of many 21^st century seniors who feel overwhelmed by the whirl of new technology.  “The boys and girls of today have so many opportunities for their mental and spiritual advancement, which never existed before, that we older people wonder how we got on at all.”

He then went on to proclaim that technological advances just might make life worse than in the good old day.  He pointed out that the greatest thinkers of history—Plato, Socrates and Aristotle—“had none of these modern wonders.”  And the greatest orators and artists “are still unapproachable by our times.”

The youngsters listening may have had more hope when Dr. Lee De Forest took the mic.  He was the inventor of the modern vacuum tube and the “phonofilm,” the new motion picture film that included sound.  Instead, he tossed cold water on their anticipation of television.

“Mr. De Forest said that the intricate difficulties which must be overcome before moving pictures in the home by radio are an every-night occurrence, are such that ‘most of us will not live to see this miracle,’” reported The New York Times.  “He also declared that he knew of no practical method of eliminating static disturbance.”

Although Queen Marie of Rumania stopped over at the Roosevelt Hotel in October 1926; she was the exception among royalty and heads of state.  Instead the hotel played host to politicians (many of whom ran their election campaigns from offices here), entertainment celebrities, and athletes.  It was also, interestingly, the favorite of the class of new American heroes—aviators.

Typical of the events held in the Roosevelt in the 1920s was the star-studded 1926 gala benefit given by the Authors’ League of America.  The ballroom was filled with luminaries from the stage and society, as well as “well-known persons of letters.”  Authors like Edna Ferber rubbed shoulders with Lulu Belle who was currently playing Lorelei Lee on Broadway in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.  And cartoonist Rube Goldberg did a skit with Harry Herschfield and Milt Gross.

Another was the February 1927 dinner for Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne hosted by alumni.  During the dinner he announced he was considering a game between Notre Dame and the University of Hawaii during the 1927 Christmas season.

What would be not only a hotel tradition, but a national one, began when Guy Lombardo and his orchestra first performed at the Roosevelt Grill on October 3, 1929.  The Royal Canadians would continue playing “the sweetest music this side of Heaven” here for three decades.  The music was transmitted live into the guest rooms via radio.

The annual New Year’s Eve broadcast from the ballroom which featured the orchestra playing Auld Lang Syne became synonymous with New Year’s Eve for families across the nation.  An up-and-coming bandleader, Lawrence Welk, got his start by filling in for Lombardo and the Royal Canadians when they took their summer breaks to play on Long Island each year.

In the 1920s and ‘30s, it would not be unusual to see celebrated aviators like Charles A. Lindberg, Richard E. Byrd or Amelia Earhart Putnam at a dinner in the Roosevelt Hotel.  But on the night of April 9, 1931 they were here not as guests of honor; but to pay tribute to a weatherman.

The next day The New York Times reported “Aviators who have crossed the Atlantic in heavier-than-air machines gathered last night for dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel to pay tribute to Dr. James H. Kimball of the New York office of the United States Weather Bureau as the man who, more than any other, had been responsible for the success of their flights.”

Nationally-famous journalist and newscaster Lowell Thomas was toastmaster and the room was filled with a who’s-who of the aeronautical field.  In addition to Lindberg, Byrd and Earhart were Clarence Chamberlin, Bernt Balchen, Frank E. Courtney, Armand Lotti and James Fitzmaurice, among others.  A message from President Herbert Hoover was read.

The system of underground tunnels linking the hotel to the train station and to other locations proved to be a convenience not only to guests, but to a criminal on July 31, 1931.  Mary Gilmartin had been the hotel’s cashier for several years.  Employees received their pay in cash and every afternoon at around 2:30 she would carry a tin box containing the day’s payroll for the afternoon and evening shifts from the paymaster’s office on the second floor to the cashier’s office on the main floor.  In the Depression years, the $5,000 payroll, in the neighborhood of $78,000 in 2015, was a tempting target.

The 27-year old woman picked up the box that afternoon, as always, and headed for the elevator.  Sitting in the corridor was a young man who twirled his brown felt hat on his finger.  Mary paid little attention to him as she pressed the elevator button.   She was suddenly attacked and the man fled with the box into the fire stairs eight feet away.

Mary ran back to the paymaster’s office and signaled all the watchmen at the hotel entrances.  The fire entrance led to a passageway under Vanderbilt Avenue, another under the main entrance to the hotel, and also to a corridor leading to an employee’s exit on 46^th Street.

The crook, who apparently had scouted Mary’s routine for several days and had his escape route well planned, slipped past all the watchmen.  Detectives surmised he had been an employee at one time.  The robber, about 25 years old, successfully made off with the unmarked bills.

Happy days were anticipated by the hotel industry when the end of Prohibition became imminent.  The Roosevelt Hotel planned a festive “Funeral of Old Man Prohibition” at “a repeal ball in costume.”  The New York Times reported on December 5, 1933 that already more than 1,200 reservations had been booked.

“At the stroke of midnight, twelve models will trumpet reveille, a burial ceremony will conclude with the opening of the casket supposed to contain the remains of Prohibition, which will let out, according to the announcement, ‘a beautiful female figure symbolic of the returning spirit of Bacchus.’”

But the repeal of Prohibition came a few months too late for the Roosevelt Hotel.  The Depression had taken its toll and for some time its management had denied rumors that the hotel was in trouble.  But in 1934 the rumored became fact when the Roosevelt was put into receivership and the courts approved a $25,000 bid on the hotel that had cost $12 million.

At mid-century, the Rough Rider Cocktail lounge featured palomino-printed upholstery and frescoes of Roosevelt's Rough Riders.

Conrad Hilton purchased the Roosevelt Hotel in 1943, calling it “a fine hotel.”  The Hilton chain was forced to sell it 13 years later, in April 1956, as part of an Anti-trust suit filed by the Government.

Although the Roosevelt Hotel continued to be a favorite spot for campaign headquarters—Thomas E Dewey not only lived here but ran his Presidential headquarters in the building, and Nelson A. Rockefeller had his Gubernatorial headquarters here in 1958, as did Kenneth B. Keating who was campaigning for Senate—changing times and an aging structure posed problems in the 1960s.

The famous Grill Room was closed the weekend before Christmas in 1963 “with no plans for reopening,” according to The New York Times; and in September 1962 newspapers announced “An Era Ends” when Guy Lombardo’s 33-year stretch came to an end.

Trouble continued in 1980 when, on July 19, the Colonial Room nightclub was destroyed by a flash fire and a month later the hotel received bad press when a Pennsylvania delegate to the Democratic National Convention, Cynthia Friedman, was robbed at knife point in the hotel corridor.

A year earlier the Pakistan International Airlines, heavily backed by Prince Faisal bin Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, signed a long-term lease on the Roosevelt, with an option to purchase after 20 years.   Nevertheless, the hotel, growing ever more dated, would not receive a face lift until that lease was up.

When the Pakistan International Airlines exercised its option to buy, it spent not only $36.5 million for the property, but initiated a $65 million renovation which prompted the ABA Journal on August 5, 1998 to proclaim it “once again reflects the simple splendor of its glittering past.”

Another updating was announced on January 1, 2011.  It resulted in the amenities expected by 21^st century travelers, including a rooftop lounge, fitness facility and Wi-Fi—none of which Chauncey Depew would have found necessary.   George B. Post & Sons’ handsome façade and historic-inspired interiors were little changed. 

photo by Billy Hathorn

The hotel has appeared in about a dozen motion pictures and in popular television shows like Mad Men.  Today the Roosevelt Hotel is the last unaltered hotel of Terminal City—built at a time when the Grand Central area bustled with the comings and goings of thousands of business travelers who needed a place to stay.