The sky was particularly cinematic tonight, giving shape to some things one might never quite notice in the blaze of day. But I had noticed my neighbor before, just not dressed as it was tonight in the beguiling raiments of deflected light and haze. It's a good building.
It's a good building and a good neighbor. It's been mine for over twenty years, across the street, across the corner. Catty-corner.
When it opened in 1928, the day before its namesake's 119th birthday, the Hotel Lincoln was the largest hotel in New York City. Its 27 stories were topped with an enormous mast bearing the hotel's name and nestled underneath in E-shaped hallways over 1300 rooms and a ballroom called the Blue Room where legendary acts like Artie Shaw and Count Basie would frequently entertain.
It was the ballroom that lured the customers, something the Kramer Family owners tried at their other successful property around the corner, the Hotel Edison, whose Green Room booked favorite Harry James. But it was also the location of the Lincoln that lent it a unique marketability, standing as a bulwark of sorts between the glamour of the Broadway theaters being built all around it at the time, and the meaner streets over here on my side of the block in Hell's Kitchen.
Mr. Kramer died and in 1956, his widow Maria sold the property to a young upstart named William Zeckendorf, the man who became one of the most legendary developers in New York City history. He remodeled the place and renamed it the Hotel Manhattan, took the mast off the roof and added a 28 -foot-tall blazing white instantly iconic M that could be seen for miles.
Mr. Zeckendorf was no hotelier, though, nor was he much interested in a neighborhood that was in decline and in short order decay by the mid-60s. By the 70s, Mr. Zeckendorf was off to greener pastures and had the Manhattan closed and boarded up. And that very well might've been the end of my neighbor.
But living inside the abandoned hotel were eight tenants who had rent stabilized leases that, by law, cannot be broken by the landlord. They stayed on for years, finally accepting buyouts for $3,000.00 which was a tidy sum in the late 70s.
In stepped the Milstein Family. Fearing anti-Semitism, but not wanting to have to deal with that big damn M up on the roof, they called their place The Milford Plaza. I'll be honest with you, it had the reputation of a dump. But in 1978, they produced a non-Union commercial to the tune of Lullaby of Broadway, paid the dancers once, and ran that commercial for the next ten years, making it the longest running commercial next to that Santa one on the electric Norelco razor they used to trot out every year.
And people came.
Until they didn't.
The late 80's and 90s saw a spate of incredibly trendy hotels open up in the neighborhood.Many in brand spanking new buildings, but even hotels in repurposed spaces like the Paramount and the Royalton, were places to be if you were one of the beautiful people. The Milford was going down.
Ramada bought it for a while, It closed entirely. Again. For two years. Then, in 2010, developers Rockpoint Group and hotel operator Highgate Holdings purchased the hotel for $200 million and began a renovation of all 1331 rooms and lobby spaces for another $140 million. It is now called Row NYC. So guess what had to go? Yes, there is no M across the street anymore. Sigh.
Good news! It seems to have found niche. The rooms are bright and cheerful, the lobby says "This is cool!" and the price point is fair and often really good. (Just beware, room sizes very wildly from spacious to claustrophobic.)
But that's all inside. Outside is a grand affair. It rises block-like but yields to the sky with the hallmark feature of Manhattan buildings in the 1920s, the setbacks. Or the wedding cake effect, as these building were often described.
The center is set off by lighter stones that rise up the west-facing front giving the building a soaring look rather than its actual horizontal silhouette.
But the top! The top is filled with medieval Italianate references like balconies and terraces and arcades. two -story Gothic windows. It looks rather like a lovely villa or a ducal palace floating atop a very jazzy 20s NYC supper club. Well done. Whimsy.
My only caveat: The bottom two stories once held beautiful large arched windows, that tied the bottom of the building to its top, essential in a land of skyscrapers. The new developers ripped all of that out and added a two-story glass box that envelopes the entire streetscape of the building. I'll have more to say on that with the next building I want to show you. I've seen it work elsewhere. It doesn't here.
So, the news is mostly good for a hotel that but for a few twists and turns in history, might easily have gone the way of the wreckers ball any number of times but somehow kept finding a way to survive another day. I think that's why like it. Plucky.
No comments:
Post a Comment