Tag Archives: midtown

Friends House

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Friends House (originally the B.W. Mayer Building) seems Mayan-inspired in its brickwork, terra cotta snakes and skulls, and turquoise details. The architect, Herman Lee Meader, also designed the Cliff Dwelling apartments on Riverside Drive and the Mayan-inspired 154-160 West 14th Street.

As the B.W. Mayer Building, it was originally offices; then for many years it was a trade school. In 1994 the Quakers purchased the building and restored it, converting the structure to a group residence.

Friends House Vital Statistics
  • Location: 130 E 25th Street at Lexington Avenue
  • Year completed: 1916
  • Architect: Herman Lee Meader
  • Floors: 7
  • Style: Art Deco
Friends House Suggested Reading

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Nelson Tower

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Nelson Tower (after Julius Nelson, the developer) is one of the tallest buildings in the Garment District, built at a time when everyone seemed to be racing to be tallest. The building’s architect, H. Craig Severance, also designed 40 Wall Street – one of the “world’s tallest” contenders of the day. Alas, 60-story One Penn Plaza now looms over 46-story Nelson Tower from across 34th Street.

The distinctive white crown can be seen throughout the neighborhood; polychrome brick spandrels enhance the vertical lines.

Other prominent buildings designed by H. Craig Severance include 40 Wall Street (aka The Trump Building, Bank of Manhattan Trust Building), Taft Hotel, and the Montague-Court Building.

Nelson Tower Vital Statistics
  • Location: 450 Seventh Avenue between W 34th and W 35th Streets
  • Year completed: 1931
  • Architect: H. Craig Severance
  • Floors: 46
  • Style: Art Deco
Nelson Tower Suggested Reading

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Hotel Martinique

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Hotel Martinique is full of surprises. For starters, don’t let the French Renaissance style fool you: The name has nothing to do with the sunny French Caribbean island – it’s named for developer William R. H. Martin. And the showy Broadway and W 32nd Street facades are actually add-ons to the hotel – it started as a more modest property on W 33rd Street.

But if the style reminds you of the Plaza, that shouldn’t surprise: the two hotels have the same architect, Henry Janeway Hardenbergh.

Like the Plaza, Hotel Martinique has open space – Greeley Square – in front of it, to show off grand-scaled elements: A four-story mansard roof, tiers of balconies and gigantic ornaments.

Grandiose was appropriate for the time. Just down the block (where the Empire State Building now stands) were the original Waldorf and Astoria hotels (also designed by Hardenbergh).

Unfortunately, as the theater district moved north over the years, so did Martinique’s luxury clientele. By the late 1900s the property became run down; in the ’70s and ’80s it was a notorious homeless shelter and welfare hotel. At the time of its designation as a NYC landmark, the Hotel Martinique was being renovated as a Holiday Inn. Currently it is a Radisson property, popular with airline crews and tour groups. In keeping with W 32nd Street’s current identity – “Korea Way” – the property has a 24-hour Korean restaurant, Kum Gang San.

Hotel Martinique Vital Statistics
  • Location: 1260 Broadway at West 32nd Street
  • Year completed: 1898, 1903, 1911 (3 phases)
  • Architect: Henry Janeway Hardenbergh
  • Floors: 16
  • Style: French Renaissance
  • New York City Landmark: 1998
Hotel Martinique Suggested Reading

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New Yorker Hotel

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New Yorker Hotel was once an elegant celebrity-studded 2,500-room property – New York City’s largest when it opened in 1930. Convenient to Pennsylvania Station, it boasted five restaurants, a 42-chair barbershop, and platoons of snappily-uniformed bellboys.

Architecturally, the 43-floor Art Deco tower was (and is) quite plain; apart from size and shape, the building’s most prominent feature is the four-story, west-facing red “NEW YORKER” sign in the crown.

As the big-band era faded, so did New Yorker’s glitter; by the 1960s the hotel (then owned by Hilton) was in decline, financially, and closed in 1972. The World Unification Church (Rev. Sun Myung Moon) bought the hotel in 1975. By 1994 the church decided to re-open the building as a hotel – starting with 178 rooms and a $20 million renovation. Ramada granted a franchise in 2000. The hotel spent an additional $70 million on renovations 2007-2009; the property now has 900+ rooms on floors 19-40. In addition, Educational Housing Services uses five floors (9, 14, 16, 17, 18) for student housing.

New Yorker Hotel’s architects, the firm of Sugarman and Berger, have several other prominent New York City buildings, including: Gramercy Arms Apartments, Broadway Fashion Building, One Fifth Avenue, Millennium Towers North/Navarro Building, Paris Hotel/Paris Apartments.

New Yorker Hotel Vital Statistics
  • Location: 481 Eighth Avenue between W 34th and W 35th Streets
  • Year completed: 1930
  • Architect: Sugarman and Berger
  • Floors: 43
  • Style: Art Deco
New Yorker Hotel Suggested Reading

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Herald Towers

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Built as the Hotel McAlpin in 1912, Herald Towers began life as the world’s largest – and in some respects most innovative – hotel.

Today, the building’s most striking feature is the Beaux Arts crown – seven stories of lavish terra cotta. Two deep light courts face west (Broadway), but the 25-story building is now overshadowed by more recent towers.

The McAlpin’s owners converted the hotel to apartments in 1980, and attempted to go condo in 2005. The condo offering failed, and the building is now rental apartments.

Along the way, the hotel’s spectacular Marine Grill was dismantled. The restaurant was vaulted, like Grand Central Terminal’s Oyster Bar. Preservationists (led by Friends of Terra Cotta President Susan Tunick), rescued the restaurant’s terra cotta murals. Those panels are now on display at the Fulton Street (Broadway/Nassau) subway station. [nycsubway.org photos]

Herald Towers Vital Statistics
  • Location: 50 W 34th Street at Broadway/Sixth Avenue (Herald Square)
  • Year completed: 1912
  • Architect: Frank Mills Andrews
  • Floors: 25
  • Style: Beaux Arts
Other Herald Towers Resources

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Five Penn Plaza

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Five Penn Plaza is overshadowed now, but as the Printing Crafts Building it was the “tallest and most imposing business structure on Eighth Avenue” [The New York Times] when built in 1916. Today, the gilt panels of former tenants recall the structure’s history.

It was conceived as the nation’s largest printing/publishing building, with 10 floors devoted to presses and binderies, and 12 floors for stockrooms and offices of publishers and ad agencies. Proximity to the main post office and Penn Station were key ingredients of the building’s success.

Despite the building’s age, it has been modernized with “green” technology (LEED-certified silver) and multiple fiber optic lines.

Five Penn Plaza Vital Statistics
  • Location: 5 Penn Plaza – 461 Eighth Avenue between W 33rd and W 34th Streets
  • Year completed: 1916
  • Architect: John & Edward Larkin
  • Floors: 24
  • Style: Beaux Arts
Five Penn Plaza Recommended Reading

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Empire State Building

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The Empire State Building is still New York City’s most-visited landmark, even though it lost “world’s tallest skyscraper” title in 1972. The building claims four million visitors a year to its 86th and 102nd floor observatories; the building reputedly makes more money from observatory ticket sales than from rents.

Books have been written about the Empire State Building (one of the best is linked below) – we’ll just hit the highlights here:

  • The land under the Empire State Building is part of a six-square-block tract that the City sold to John Thompson for $2,600 in 1799. He farmed the land, and sold it for $10,000 in 1825. Two years later William B. Astor bought the farm for $20,500. In 1859 and 1862 the Astors built two mansions on the plot now occupied by the Empire State Building. In 1893 and 1897 those mansions were demolished to make way for the Waldorf Hotel and Astoria Hotel, which were operated jointly as the Waldorf-Astoria. In 1928 the Bethlehem Engineering Corporation bought the properties for $20 million.
  • General Motors executive John J. Raskob set up The Empire State Corporation in 1929, with four-time New York Governor (and Democratic presidential candidate) Al Smith as President.
  • It took five months to demolish the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel; two months to excavate the site for construction; 13 months to build the Empire State Building.
  • Architects Shreve, Lamb and Harmon produced drawings for the Empire State Building in just two weeks – based on their earlier designs for the Reynolds Building (Winston-Salem, NC) and Carew Tower (Cincinnati, OH).
  • Under budget: The Empire State Building was erected in less time (13.5 months vs 18 months) and for less money ($24.7 million vs $43 million) than budgeted.
  • President Hoover officially opened the Empire State Building by pushing a button in Washington, D.C. on May 1, 1931. (May 1 was the traditional lease-signing day in New York City.)
  • Bad timing: The building opened during the Great Depression, and for years was derided as the “Empty State Building” for lack of tenants.
  • Lights: The Empire State Building has always used lights to attract attention. A November, 1932 beacon celebrated the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as President. In May, 1956, four “Freedom Lights” beacons were installed. In 1964 the building installed floodlights, commemorating the New York World’s Fair. In November 2012, the Empire State Building switched on LED lights, replacing the floodlights.
  • 1933: “King Kong” is released.
  • 1945: An Army Air Force B-25 bomber en route to Newark swerved to miss the fog-shrouded Chrysler Building – and crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building.
  • 1950: The Empire State Building grew 217 feet via a new broadcast antenna, after the FCC ordered an end to NBC’s exclusive use of the tower.
  • 1978: First Annual ESB Run-Up competition. Record time: 9 minutes, 33 seconds from ground floor to 86th floor.
Empire State Building Vital Statistics
  • Location: 350 Fifth Avenue between W 33rd and W 34th Streets
  • Year completed: 1931
  • Architect: William F. Lamb of Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon
  • Floors: 102
  • Style: Art Deco
  • New York City Landmark: 1981
  • National Register of Historic Places: 1982
Empire State Building Recommended Reading

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The Wilbraham

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The Wilbraham is a rare species: a “bachelor apartment hotel,” or “bachelor flats.” In the late 1800s, New York City had an unusually large concentration of single men. Yet bachelors were outcasts, of sorts, in the housing market: They couldn’t afford to live in rowhouses or hotels and were considered awkward in family-oriented apartment buildings (“French flats”) or apartment hotels. Bachelor flats were apartment hotels (each apartment included a suite of rooms with bathroom but no kitchen – a separate dining room served all residents) exclusively for single men.

The Wilbraham was considered among the most fashionable of bachelor flats, with its Fifth Avenue location, elegant architecture and amenities – including an elevator.

By 1929 the building had become a normal apartment hotel – women outnumbered men 15-10 according to the census. In 1934, new owners added kitchens to some of the apartments. Subsequent renovations converted the dining room and penthouse servants quarters to full apartments, as well.

The bottom two floors have always been a store.

The Wilbraham Vital Statistics
  • Location: 284 Fifth Avenue at W 30th Street (also 1 W 30th Street)
  • Year completed: 1890
  • Architect: D. & J. Jardine
  • Floors: 8
  • Style: Romanesque Revival
  • New York City Landmark: 2004
The Wilbraham Recommended Reading

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135 East 57th Street

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135 East 57th Street breaks the mold by breaking the building line – biting off the sacred corner to create a plaza backed by a concave tower.

Coincidentally, the 31-story tower complements 30-story International Plaza two blocks north – which has similar coloration and was also completed in 1988. The New York Times observed, “…together the buildings engage in a wonderful, even witty, piece of inadvertent dialogue on the cityscape.”

135 East 57th Street Vital Statistics
  • Location: 135 East 57th Street at Lexington Avenue
  • Year completed: 1988
  • Architect: Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates
  • Floors: 31
  • Style: Postmodern
135 East 57th Street Recommended Reading

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United Nations

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The fledgling United Nations took great pains to demonstrate international cooperation (and independence) in the design of its headquarters. But by some accounts, the world’s architectural elite were as combative as a room full of generals.

As New York Magazine summed it up:

“The pragmatic New Yorker Wallace K. Harrison found himself placating squabbling visionaries. Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, in particular, fought over the shape, number, and orientation of the buildings, whether the glass curtain wall should include a sun-shading grid of stone, and — most ferociously — who got credit for what. Le Corbusier complained to his mother of the ‘apparent kidnapping of [his] U.N. project by USA gangster Harrison.'”

The result was a landmark that influenced skyscraper architecture throughout New York – and worldwide.

I’m fascinated by the buildings’ changing personalities, depending on your vantage point and the time of day.

It’s a minor miracle that the United Nations has managed to accommodate its membership over the years. In 1947 the U.N. had 57 members, and building plans allowed for growth to 70 members. In 1964, expansion allowed for 126 members. The assembly was expanded again in 1980, and the U.N. now has 193 members. The U.N. is in the last months of renovating its headquarters. The six-year program (to be completed in 2014) removed asbestos, rewired, added sprinklers and fire alarm systems, even replaced the famous glass walls. Fortunately (for traditionalists), the world body chose to preserve the buildings’ appearance. It’s a massive project: The original construction cost $65 million; the renovation will cost $1.8 billion.

United Nations Vital Statistics
  • Location: First Avenue (United Nations Plaza), E 42nd to E 48th Street
  • Year completed: 1952
  • Architect: Oscar Niemeyer, Le Corbusier, Harrison & Abramovitz with Nikolai G. Bassov, Gaston Brunfaut, Ernest Cormier, Liang Seu-Cheng, Sven Markelius, Sir Howard Robertson, G. A. Soilleux, and Julio Vilamajo
  • Floors: 39 (Secretariat)
  • Style: International
United Nations Recommended Reading

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