Astor Hotel
Encyclopedia
The Hotel Astor was a hotel
located in the Times Square
area of Manhattan
, in operation from 1904 through 1967. The former site of the hotel, the block bounded by Broadway
, Astor Plaza, West 44th Street, and West 45th Street, is now occupied by the high-rise 54-story office tower One Astor Plaza
.
's Waldorf-Astoria on 34th Street
. Plans for the grand hotel were conceived in 1900 by William C. Muschenheim and his brother, Frederick A. Muschenheim. The area was then known as Longacre Square
and stood beyond the fringe of metropolitan life, the center of New York's carriage-building trade. The Muschenheim brothers became the proprietors for absentee landlord William Waldorf Astor, from whom the land was leased.
The 35000 square feet (3,251.6 m²) Hotel Astor was built in two stages, in 1905 and 1909-1910, by the same architects in the same style. On completion it occupied an entire city block at a reported total cost of $7 million. Architects Clinton & Russell had designed a number of Astor commissions; here they developed a very Parisian "Beaux Arts" style completed with green-copper mansard roof
. Its eleven stories contained 1000 guest rooms, with two more levels underground for its extensive "backstage" functions, such as the wine cellar.
The Astor was an important element in the growth of Times Square and its character as an entertainment center. In 1904 New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved his newspaper's operations to a new tower on 42nd Street
in the middle of Longacre Square, and Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr.
to build a subway station there and rename it Times Square. The theatre district would soon occupy magnificent new auditoriums along Forty-second Street, and electric lighting transformed this strip of Broadway into the "Great White Way".
The Hotel Astor's success triggered the construction of the nearby Knickerbocker Hotel by other members of the Astor family two years later, although that property was converted into commercial office space within a few years. The Astor set the pattern for "a new species of popular hotels that soon clustered around Times Square, vast amusement palaces that catered to crowds with scenographic interiors that mirrored the theatricality of the Great White Way."
, a Flemish smoking room, a Pompeiian billiard room, the Hunt Room decorated in sixteenth century German Renaissance
style, and many other features.
The Large Ballroom (or Banquet Hall), located on the ninth floor, was opened with a dinner in connection with the Hudson-Fulton Celebration
. Measuring 50 feet (15.2 m) wide by 85 feet (25.9 m) long, the Banquet Hall was decorated in the rococo
style of Louis XV and featured a high-groined arch ceiling in ivory white and old gold, supported by grouped caryatid
s. A gallery ran along the south and west sides, affording a fine view of the room, which could accommodate 500 diners.
The smaller ballroom, seating 250, was decorated in the neoclassical
Louis XVI manner and could be joined with the larger ballroom. Still another adjoining room, "The College Hall", could also be opened into the ballroom so that up to 1100 persons could be seated. The Palm Garden, or "L'Orangerie", located in the rear of the first floor lobby, was intended to represent an Italian garden. Its ceiling, painted to represent a Mediterranean sky, was partly concealed by feigned vine-covered pergolas. Blue lighting, hanging lamps draped in vines, swaying fern baskets, and scenic pictures of the out-of-doors further enhanced the perception.
The rooftop garden, with bandstand and observatory, was one of a number constructed in the city between 1880 and Prohibition
, among them the American Theater on Eighth Avenue, the garden atop Stanford White
's 1890 Madison Square Garden
, and the Paradise Roof Garden opened by Oscar Hammerstein I
in 1900. In later years the noted landscape architect Takeo Shiota
redesigned the roof's North Garden on a Japanese theme.
Artwork in the original lobby included four murals by William de Leftwich Dodge
depicting Ancient and Modern New York, and a statue of the Three Graces by sculptor Isidore Konti
, a likeness of the American model Audrey Munson
.
for decades, from the extended double entendre
song "She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor", to its appearance in the 1945 film The Clock
, which provides a good view of the wartime-era lobby (although reconstructed in Hollywood). Among many other musicians, the swing era
bandleader Tommy Dorsey
appeared regularly on the rooftop bandstand, and it was there that Frank Sinatra
made early New York appearances with Dorsey's band from 1940 to 1942.
In 1947 the exterior of the hotel was climbed by stuntman John Ciampa
as part of a publicity stunt for the Sunbrock Rodeo and Thrill Circus. On a 1947 post card, Hotel Astor claimed "1000 rooms, 1000 baths" and as "The Crossroads of the World"
Since the 1910s the Astor Bar had acquired a reputation as a gay meeting place. During World War II the Astor Bar was one of three American hotel bars "world famous for their wartime ambience" (the other two being the Top of the Mark
at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, and the men's bar at the Los Angeles Biltmore
). Unlike the flamboyant late-night scenes at the automats, gay patrons at the Astor Bar were welcomed, alloted an entire side of the oval bar, and expected to be discrete (by the standards of the time). Thus "the Astor maintained its public reputation as an eminently respectable Times Square rendezvous, while its reputation as a gay rendezvous and pickup bar assumed legendary proportions."
, and was managed by Prince Serge Obolensky
. As an indirect result of Zeckendorf's 1965 bankruptcy, the Astor was closed in 1967 and demolished in 1968. The site is now occupied by a 54-story skyscraper designed by Der Scutt
of Ely J. Kahn & Jacobs
and completed in 1972.
Hotel
A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. The provision of basic accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms...
located in the Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
area of Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, in operation from 1904 through 1967. The former site of the hotel, the block bounded by Broadway
Broadway (New York City)
Broadway is a prominent avenue in New York City, United States, which runs through the full length of the borough of Manhattan and continues northward through the Bronx borough before terminating in Westchester County, New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to...
, Astor Plaza, West 44th Street, and West 45th Street, is now occupied by the high-rise 54-story office tower One Astor Plaza
One Astor Plaza
One Astor Plaza is a high skyscraper in Times Square in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Completed in 1972, the building is 54 stories tall and was designed by Der Scutt of Ely J. Kahn & Jacobs. Originally known as the W. T...
.
Construction
With its elaborately decorated public rooms and its roof garden, the Astor Hotel was perceived as the successor to the Astor familyAstor family
The Astor family is a Anglo-American business family of German descent notable for their prominence in business, society, and politics.-Founding family members:...
's Waldorf-Astoria on 34th Street
34th Street (Manhattan)
34th Street is a major cross-town street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, connecting the Lincoln Tunnel and Queens-Midtown Tunnel. Like many of New York City's major crosstown streets, it has its own bus routes and four subway stops serving the trains at Eighth Avenue, the trains at...
. Plans for the grand hotel were conceived in 1900 by William C. Muschenheim and his brother, Frederick A. Muschenheim. The area was then known as Longacre Square
Longacre Square
Longacre Square in New York City, the predecessor of Times Square, Manhattan, formed a nexus of important roads to the north of the island at the intersection of 42nd Street, Bloomingdale Road and Seventh Avenue, today in Midtown Manhattan....
and stood beyond the fringe of metropolitan life, the center of New York's carriage-building trade. The Muschenheim brothers became the proprietors for absentee landlord William Waldorf Astor, from whom the land was leased.
The 35000 square feet (3,251.6 m²) Hotel Astor was built in two stages, in 1905 and 1909-1910, by the same architects in the same style. On completion it occupied an entire city block at a reported total cost of $7 million. Architects Clinton & Russell had designed a number of Astor commissions; here they developed a very Parisian "Beaux Arts" style completed with green-copper mansard roof
Mansard roof
A mansard or mansard roof is a four-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterized by two slopes on each of its sides with the lower slope at a steeper angle than the upper that is punctured by dormer windows. The roof creates an additional floor of habitable space, such as a garret...
. Its eleven stories contained 1000 guest rooms, with two more levels underground for its extensive "backstage" functions, such as the wine cellar.
The Astor was an important element in the growth of Times Square and its character as an entertainment center. In 1904 New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved his newspaper's operations to a new tower on 42nd Street
42nd Street (Manhattan)
42nd Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, known for its theaters, especially near the intersection with Broadway at Times Square. It is also the name of the region of the theater district near that intersection...
in the middle of Longacre Square, and Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr.
George B. McClellan, Jr.
George Brinton McClellan, Jr., was an American politician, statesman, and educator. The son of American Civil War general and presidential candidate George B...
to build a subway station there and rename it Times Square. The theatre district would soon occupy magnificent new auditoriums along Forty-second Street, and electric lighting transformed this strip of Broadway into the "Great White Way".
The Hotel Astor's success triggered the construction of the nearby Knickerbocker Hotel by other members of the Astor family two years later, although that property was converted into commercial office space within a few years. The Astor set the pattern for "a new species of popular hotels that soon clustered around Times Square, vast amusement palaces that catered to crowds with scenographic interiors that mirrored the theatricality of the Great White Way."
Amenities
Within its restrained exterior, the Astor featured a long list of elaborately themed ballrooms and exotic restaurants: the Old New York lobby, the American Indian Grill Room with artifacts collected with the help of the American Museum of Natural HistoryAmerican Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world...
, a Flemish smoking room, a Pompeiian billiard room, the Hunt Room decorated in sixteenth century German Renaissance
German Renaissance
The German Renaissance, part of the Northern Renaissance, was a cultural and artistic movement that spread among German thinkers in the 15th and 16th centuries, which originated from the Italian Renaissance in Italy...
style, and many other features.
The Large Ballroom (or Banquet Hall), located on the ninth floor, was opened with a dinner in connection with the Hudson-Fulton Celebration
Hudson-Fulton Celebration
The Hudson-Fulton Celebration from September 25 to October 9, 1909 in New York and New Jerseywas an elaborate commemoration of the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the Hudson River and the 100th anniversary of Robert Fulton’s first successful commercial application of the paddle...
. Measuring 50 feet (15.2 m) wide by 85 feet (25.9 m) long, the Banquet Hall was decorated in the rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...
style of Louis XV and featured a high-groined arch ceiling in ivory white and old gold, supported by grouped caryatid
Caryatid
A caryatid is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. The Greek term karyatides literally means "maidens of Karyai", an ancient town of Peloponnese...
s. A gallery ran along the south and west sides, affording a fine view of the room, which could accommodate 500 diners.
The smaller ballroom, seating 250, was decorated in the neoclassical
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
Louis XVI manner and could be joined with the larger ballroom. Still another adjoining room, "The College Hall", could also be opened into the ballroom so that up to 1100 persons could be seated. The Palm Garden, or "L'Orangerie", located in the rear of the first floor lobby, was intended to represent an Italian garden. Its ceiling, painted to represent a Mediterranean sky, was partly concealed by feigned vine-covered pergolas. Blue lighting, hanging lamps draped in vines, swaying fern baskets, and scenic pictures of the out-of-doors further enhanced the perception.
The rooftop garden, with bandstand and observatory, was one of a number constructed in the city between 1880 and Prohibition
Prohibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...
, among them the American Theater on Eighth Avenue, the garden atop Stanford White
Stanford White
Stanford White was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be found...
's 1890 Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden (1890)
Madison Square Garden was an indoor arena in New York City, the second by that name, and the second to be located at 26th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan...
, and the Paradise Roof Garden opened by Oscar Hammerstein I
Oscar Hammerstein I
Oscar Hammerstein I was a businessman, theater impresario and composer in New York City. His passion for opera led him to open several opera houses, and he rekindled opera's popularity in America...
in 1900. In later years the noted landscape architect Takeo Shiota
Takeo Shiota
Takeo Shiota was a Japanese-American landscape architect, best known for his design of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden....
redesigned the roof's North Garden on a Japanese theme.
Artwork in the original lobby included four murals by William de Leftwich Dodge
William de Leftwich Dodge
William de Leftwich Dodge was an American artist best known for his murals.Dodge was born at Liberty, Virginia. He took first place in the examinations for the École des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1881, and also studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme and at the Académie Colarossi. He also studied in...
depicting Ancient and Modern New York, and a statue of the Three Graces by sculptor Isidore Konti
Isidore Konti
Isidore Konti was a Vienna-born sculptor. He began formal art studies at the age of 16 when he entered the Imperial Academy in Vienna where he studied under Edmund von Hellmer. In 1886 he won a scholarship that allowed him to study in Rome for two years...
, a likeness of the American model Audrey Munson
Audrey Munson
Audrey Munson was an American artist's model and film actress, known variously as "Miss Manhattan," "the Exposition Girl," and "American Venus." She was the model or inspiration for more than 15 statues in New York City and appeared in four silent films.-Life and career:Audrey Marie Munson was...
.
Social history
As a popular meeting place and New York City landmark, the Astor had a place in popular culturePopular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
for decades, from the extended double entendre
Double entendre
A double entendre or adianoeta is a figure of speech in which a spoken phrase is devised to be understood in either of two ways. Often the first meaning is straightforward, while the second meaning is less so: often risqué or ironic....
song "She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor", to its appearance in the 1945 film The Clock
The Clock (film)
The Clock is a 1945 film starring Judy Garland and Robert Walker and directed by Garland's future husband, Vincente Minnelli. This was Garland's first dramatic role as well as her first starring vehicle in which she did not sing.-Plot:...
, which provides a good view of the wartime-era lobby (although reconstructed in Hollywood). Among many other musicians, the swing era
Swing Era
The Swing era was the period of time when big band swing music was the most popular music in the United States. Though the music had been around since the late 1920s and early 1930s, being played by black bands led by such artists as Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Benny Moten, Ella Fitzgerald,...
bandleader Tommy Dorsey
Tommy Dorsey
Thomas Francis "Tommy" Dorsey, Jr. was an American jazz trombonist, trumpeter, composer, and bandleader of the Big Band era. He was known as "The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing", due to his smooth-toned trombone playing. He was the younger brother of bandleader Jimmy Dorsey...
appeared regularly on the rooftop bandstand, and it was there that Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
made early New York appearances with Dorsey's band from 1940 to 1942.
In 1947 the exterior of the hotel was climbed by stuntman John Ciampa
John Ciampa
John Ciampa was an Italian-American autodidactic stuntman and entertainer known by the stage names of the Human Fly, the Flying Phantom and the Brooklyn Tarzan....
as part of a publicity stunt for the Sunbrock Rodeo and Thrill Circus. On a 1947 post card, Hotel Astor claimed "1000 rooms, 1000 baths" and as "The Crossroads of the World"
Since the 1910s the Astor Bar had acquired a reputation as a gay meeting place. During World War II the Astor Bar was one of three American hotel bars "world famous for their wartime ambience" (the other two being the Top of the Mark
Top of the Mark
The Top of the Mark is a rooftop bar located at the top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill at California- and Mason Streets in San Francisco, California...
at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, and the men's bar at the Los Angeles Biltmore
Millennium Biltmore Hotel
The Millennium Biltmore Hotel, originally named the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel of the Biltmore Hotels group, is a luxury hotel located on Pershing Square in Downtown Los Angeles, California. Upon its grand opening in 1923, the Los Angeles Biltmore was the largest hotel west of Chicago, Illinois in...
). Unlike the flamboyant late-night scenes at the automats, gay patrons at the Astor Bar were welcomed, alloted an entire side of the oval bar, and expected to be discrete (by the standards of the time). Thus "the Astor maintained its public reputation as an eminently respectable Times Square rendezvous, while its reputation as a gay rendezvous and pickup bar assumed legendary proportions."
Later years
In the late 1950s as the Sheraton Astor the hotel became the property of real estate entrepreneur William ZeckendorfWilliam Zeckendorf
William Zeckendorf, Sr. was a prominent American real estate developer. Through his development company Webb and Knapp – for which he began working in 1938 and which he purchased in 1949 – he developed a significant portion of the New York City urban landscape.-Career:Zeckendorf's...
, and was managed by Prince Serge Obolensky
Serge Obolensky
Sergei Platonovich 5th Knyaz Obolensky-Neledinsky-Meletzky was a Russian Prince and Vice Chairman of the Board of Hilton Hotels Corporation....
. As an indirect result of Zeckendorf's 1965 bankruptcy, the Astor was closed in 1967 and demolished in 1968. The site is now occupied by a 54-story skyscraper designed by Der Scutt
Der Scutt
Der Scutt was the architect and designer of major buildings throughout New York City and the United States....
of Ely J. Kahn & Jacobs
Ely Jacques Kahn
Ely Jacques Kahn was an American commercial architect who designed numerous skyscrapers in New York City in the twentieth century. In addition to buildings intended for commercial use, Kahn's designs ranged throughout the possibilities of architectural programs, including facilities for the film...
and completed in 1972.