Built in 1903 by the eccentric music and animal
lover William Earl Dodge Stokes, was New York’s first air-conditioned
hotel. It was equipped with luxuries such as
electric stoves, hot and cold water, freezers, and an early form of
central air-conditioning. It also has very thick walls, installed to
protect against fire, but this made the Ansonia Apartments the
most soundproof in the city. Because of this, many of it's famous
tenants were musicians including Enrico
Caruso,
Igor
Stravinsky,
Arturo
Toscanini,
Ezio
Pinza,
Lily
Pons,
Sergei
Rachmaninoff,
Gustave
Mahler,
and Yehudi Menuhin.
Theatrical
notables include Sol Hurok, Florenz
Ziegfeld, Sarah Bernhardt, Bille Burke, Moss Hart, Tony Curtis and Paul
Sorvino; sports legends Babe
Ruth and Jack Dempsey lived
here
and
writers
Elmer Rice, W.L. Stodard and
Theodore Dreiser.
The Ansonia was Babe Ruth's
first home in New York after the owner of
the Boston Red Sox "sold" him to the Yankees. Living the life of a
bachelor, Babe Ruth sowed his wild oats at The Ansonia, then New York's
most elegant residential hotel. Legend has it that he chased women up
and down the halls and had one employee dedicated to sorting his fan
mail--"Keep the dough and the pictures of the broads, and throw the
rest out," were his reputed instructions.
The building originally contained 340 suites with over 1400 rooms
altogether (which have since been subdivided for more apartments), as
well as ballrooms, tea rooms, writing rooms, a lobby fountain with live
seals, and the world’s largest indoor pool (circa 1904) in the
basement. Stokes also kept a private farm on the roof with live
chickens, ducks, goats and a small bear.
The
entrance gate today
The
Apthorp in 1906
The Apthorp
2207 Broadway (Full block between
78th
& 79th Streets, Broadway and West End Avenue)
The Apthorp is one of the rare New York City
apartment buildings to occupy an entire city block. The Renaissance
Revival building designed by architects Clinton & Russell, was
built between 1906 and 1908. The building is built around a huge
interior courtyard. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Apthorp is divided into four buildings, A through D placed
around the courtyard, with a circular, cobblestone driveway. The West
End Avenue gate is permanently closed. Tenants have included Al Pacino, Conan O'Brien, Cyndi Lauper, Rosie O'Donnell, and 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft, Nora Ephron, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, Lena Horne, Kate Nelligan.
In 2008 the building, which had been rental, became a condominium. The
conversion has been troubled, with feuding co-owners, and the threat of
foreclosure. The apartments are insanely expensive. Recently the prices
were cut by a third but the building remains largely empty. What a
shame.
Visit:
http://www.theapthorp.com/
SOURCES: Wikipedia and NEW YORK:The
Movie Lovers Guide by Richard Alleman
The Melrose
Hotel—
Formerly The Barbizon
Hotel
for women
The
Barbizon
Hotel for Women
Grace
Kelly
140 East 63rd Street
Built in 1927, The Barbizon was symbolic of the
cultural change as women began to come to New York City for
professional opportunities, but still wanted a "safe retreat" that felt
like the family home.
For most of its existence, no men were allowed above the ground floor
and strict dress and conduct rules were enforced. The hotel became a
more standard hotel when it began admitting men as guests in 1981. In
2002, a $40 million renovation was completed and the name was changed
to the Melrose Hotel.
Even after the condo renovation, there are still 13 women living under
the old arrangements at the hotel.
The building includes a large indoor pool, and air rights to adjacent
properties were purchased when the building was constructed, ensuring
plenty of light and unimpeded views for the upper floors.
Famous residents include Edith Bouvier Beale, Candice
Bergen, Grace
Kelly, Liza Minnelli, Joan
Crawford and Ali McGraw
SOURCE:Wikipedia
Irving
Berlin's residence at 17 Beekman Place
Beekman
Place
Irving Berlin
49th and 50th Streets—the two blocks east
of First Avenue
Beekman Place originally included the property of James Beekman's
colonial mansion, Mount Pleasant, built in 1763. The town houses were
remodeled in the 1920s.
Since the early development of Manhattan,
Beekman Place has been an enclave of old money. It has been home to
members of the Rockefeller family and Huntington Hartford, heir to the
A&P fortune, lived at One Beekman Place in the 1950s. Theatrical
personalities also lived here, among them Alfred Lunt and Lynn
Fontanne, Ethel Barrymore, Katharine Cornell and Irving Berlin.
Several
famous people lived at the large apartment building, 1 Beekman Place,
which is at the corner of Beekman and Mitchell Place, including
novelists Mary McCarthy and John P. Marquand. This was where the
real
real Auntie Mame lived!
SOURCE:http://www.turtlebay-nyc.org/places.html
The
Beresford
Rock Hudson
211 Central Park West / 1
and 7 West 81st Street
Built in 1929,
this beautiful apartment building is so large it has 3 addresses.
Famous occupants have included, Meryl
Streep, Peter Jennings,
Helen
Gurly Brown, Tony Randall, Rock Hudson, John McEnroe and Tatum O’Neal,
Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer, Calvin Klien, Beverly Sills, Isaac
Stern, and Jerry Seinfeld
SOURCES: Wikipedia and NEW YORK:The
Movie Lovers Guide by Richard Alleman
The Chelsea Hotel
Mark
Twain
Dylan
Thomas
Arthur
Miller
Leonard
Cohen
Janis
Joplin Sid
and Nancy
222 West 23rd
Built in 1884 The Chelsea was the city's first
Co-operative apartment
complex. For twenty years the co-op system worked but after 2 financial
panics in a row in the early part of the 20th century, the
Chelsea went bankrupt and then was turned into a hotel. Since the
1920's it has been a haven for transient artists.
Some of the people
who have stayed there include: Mark
Twain, O' Henry, Sarah
Bernhardt, Dylan
Thomas,
Thomas Wolfe, Tennessee Williams, Leonard Cohen, Arthur
Miller, William
Burroughs,
Claes Oldenburg, Willem de
Kooning, Jackson
Pollock, Donald Sutherland,
Christo, Arthur C. Clarke (wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey here), Patti
Smith, Andy Warhol (filmed Chelsea
Girls there), Jane Fonda, Bob
Dylan (lived there with wife
Sara
and wrote Sad-eyed
Lady
of
the
Lowlands.
They
had a child here) Jim Carroll, Milos Forman ( who directed Hair while living here) and Sid
Vicious
The Chelsea was famous even back at a time when Mark Twain was living
in one of its rooms. Thomas Wolfe
and Arthur Miller lived and
wrote here. Miller, who stayed six years at the Chelsea described the
famous artist's hotel like this: This
hotel
does
not
belong
to
America.
There
are
no
vacuum
cleaners,
no
rules
and
shame...it's
the
high
spot
of
the
surreal.
Cautiously,
I
lifted
my
feet
to
move
across bloodstained winos passing out on the
sidewalks--and I was happy. I witnessed how a new time, the sixties,
stumbled into the Chelsea with young, bloodshot eyes.
Until 1884, the Chelsea Hotel was the highest building in New York
City.
Today, only 100 of the Chelsea's 400 'units' are available to 'normal'
New York visitors, the rest of them is occupied by permanent residents.
Every room at the Chelsea tells its own story. In Room 205, welsh poet Dylan Thomas, fell
into a fatal coma after having 18 whiskeys in a row.
Number 100 was once occupied by Sid
Vicious, bass player with The Sex Pistols, and his girlfriend Nancy
Dungeoned. On the morning of October 11, 1978 Dungeoned was
found in
the
bathroom, stabbed to death.Vicious, arrested under suspicion of
murder, died shortly thereafter of a heroin overdose.
Jim Hendrix lived
here. Janis Joplin did not only have a love affair
with Southern Comfort but also had a short liaison with Leonard Cohen.
The Canadian rock
poet, too, loved the hotel: It's one
of those hotels that have everything that I love so well about hotels.
I love hotels to which, at four a.m., you can bring along a midget, a
bear and four ladies, drag them to your room and no one cares about it
at all.
For many, the Chelsea was a hideout or regular address for many years,
remembers Stanley Bard, who's been the hotel manager for almost 40
years now. Some of them lived here over decades. It was only recently
that punk-icon Patti Smith
moved out.
Bob Dylan lived in
suite # 2011. Number 411 was Janis
Joplin's
suite. Over the years, Leonard
Cohen has lived in many
rooms. Most of his time in New York in the sixties he was living
at # 424. Long after this, Jon Bon Jovi wrote the song and shot his
video for 'Midnight At Chelsea" in suite # 515.
SOURCES:
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/CHE/CHE001-ChelseaHotel.htm; Wikipedia
The
Christadora House today
Christadora
House
143 Avenue B This 17-story, dark brown brick structure began its
existence as the Christadora Settlement House in 1928.
Fronting on Tompkins Park in the heart of the East Village, this
handsome building was designed by Henry C. Pelton in a style that was
an interesting and strong example of the transition between the
minimalist neo-classical and Art Deco styles. Pelton also designed the
Park Avenue Baptist Church at 64th Street and the Park Avenue Methodist
Church on East 86th Street
The building has had an interesting history. George Gershwin gave his
first public recital in its third floor concert hall, according to
Elliot Willensky and Norval White in their book, "The A.I.A. Guide to
New York City, Third Edition," (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988).
Decades later it was the center of a community center controversy that
became part of serious civil disturbances in and around the park.
By the 1980's, the East Village was beginning to be gentrified and this
building by converted by Harvey Skydell and Sam Glasser in late 1986 to
condominiums. John T. Fifield Associates and Justin Georges were the
architects of the conversion.
The Dakota in 1890
The Dakota today
The
Dakota
John Lennon Lauren Bacall Boris Karloff
Judy
Holliday
1 west 72nd
St. The Dakota, was built from 1880 to 1884, and is
located on the northwest corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West.
According to popular legend, the Dakota was so named because at the
time it was built, the Upper West Side of Manhattan was sparsely
inhabited and considered as remote as the Dakota Territory.
Several movies, including Rosemary's Baby and Vanilla Sky directed by
Roman Polanski and Cameron Crowe respectively, use the exterior of the
Dakota. Interiors of the building portrayed in the films had to be shot
on a soundstage as the Dakota does not allow filming inside.
The building is best known as the home of former Beatle John Lennon, starting in 1973, and
as the location of Lennon's murder by Mark David Chapman on December 8,
1980.
Former and current
residents include:
Lauren Bacall
Leonard Bernstein
Connie Chung and husband Maury Povich
F. Ambrose Clark who was also grandson of the original builder songwriter/producer
Bob Crewe
José Ferrer
Roberta Flack
Charles Henri Ford
Judy Garland
Steve Guttenberg
Judy Holliday playwright William
Inge Boris Karloff
John Lennon
Sean Lennon, son of John and
Yoko football player, coach, and announcer John Madden
author Carson McCullers filmmaker Albert
Maysles musician Ian
McDonald dancer Rudolf
Nureyev artist Yoko Ono comedienne Gilda
Radner critic Rex Reed film and television producer Edgar J. Scherick
singer Neil Sedaka
actor Jason Robards
actor Robert Ryan
actor Zachary Scott
The
El Dorado
The
El
Dorado
300 Central Park West (90th and 91st) The El
Dorado was constructed between 1929 and 1931
Some of the stars that have lived here are Carrie
Fisher, Bianca
Jagger, Martin Balsam, Bono, Moby, Tuesday Weld, Micheal J. Fox and
Tracy Pollen,
and Phil Donahue and Marlo Thomas, Faye Dunaway, Richard Dreyfuss and
Roddy McDowall.
3 Gramercy
Park West—Garfield
15
Gramercy Arts South—
National Arts Club/Samuel Tildon
Edwin
Booth House— 16 Gramercy Park South
34 Gramercy Park
East—
James Cagney
36 Gramercy Park
East—
Barrymore
Gramercy Park
John
Garfield
Edwin Booth
Thomas
Edison
James
Cagney
John
Barrymore
John
Steinbeck
End of Lexington Ave between 20th and 21st
Street
Gramercy Park and the surrounding neighborhood is
one of New York's most charming and authentic sections. Change has come
very slowly here: Many of the houses and apartment buildings date from
the 19th century. Over the years it has been the home of countless
prominent New Yorkers, many of them artists and writers. The park is
the only remaining private park in Manhattan.
The park is still beautifully maintained by it's owners, those who have
keys to the iron gates. Residents living in buildings that face the
park may buy a key to the park, which is changed annually. In addition,
members of the Players Club and the National Arts Club as well as
guests of the Gramercy Park Hotel have key access, as does Calvary
Church.
The Gramercy Park Hotel
(see below) was built and opened in 1925. Other than that, there have
been few alterations to the square in the last hundred years. Noteworthy people who have lived here include:
John Garfield—3 Gramercy Park West The American movie and stage actor died here in his
sleep on May 19, 1952. He was
only 39 years old.
Samuel Tilden—15 Gramercy Park South Tilden was a govenor of New York. He is best remembered as the
presidential candidate who in 1876 won the popular vote by 250,000 but
lost in the electoral college to Rutherford B. Hayes. This building,
built in 1845 and remodelled in 1874, became the National Arts Club in 1906.
Edwin Booth—16 Gramercy Park South
Booth was a very successful and popular actor in the 19th century. He
was the older brother of John Wilkes, the man who shot Abraham Lincoln.
He purchased the house in 1888 and commissioned Stanford White to remodel it. He
then turned it into the Players Club,
which
he
presented
to
a
group
of
New
York
actors
as
their
permanent
home.
Booth
died
in
his
quarters
here
at
the club on June 8, 1893.
There is a statue of him inside the park.
Thomas Edison—24 Gramercy
Park South
Edison rented an apartment in a building located here in 1881 with his
wife and daughter.
His laboratory was located in Upper Manhattan and they lived at their
home in Menlo Park, New Jersey during the summer months. The original
house was demolished in 1908 and replaced by this modern building.
James Cagney—34 Garmercy
Park East
This red brick Victorian apartment house called the Gramercy was built
in 1883 and is probably the city's first cooperative. the building
still has cable-controlled bird cage elevators. It was also the home of Margaret Hamilton who played the
wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz.
John Barrymore—36 Gramercy Park East The actor, and grandfather of Drew Barrymore, lived
in this building with his first wife. Their apartment had a balcony
overlooking the park.
John Steinbeck—38 Gramercy Park North Steinbeck was a young writer just arrived from
California in 1925 when he rented a small dingy room in this building.
It was up six flights of stairs and cost him $7 a week. He got a job as a cub reporter
for the New York World which supported him temporarily while he wrote
short stories. The job did not last and he was unsuccessful in getting
any
of his stories publised. He retuned, dejected, to California in the
summer of 1925.
Source:
The Streets Where They
Lived by Stephen W. Plumb
The Gramercy
Park
Hotel
2 Lexington Ave, at Gramercy Park North
The Gramercy Park Hotel was one of New York’s truly legendary hotels,
designed by Robert T. Lyons and built by the famous developer brothers
Bing and Bing in 1925. The hotel occupies the site of the former homes
of flamboyant architect Stanford White
and controversial agnostic Robert
Ingersoll. In the hotel's first two years, Humphrey Bogart lived in the hotel
with his first wife Helen Menken, just after marrying her, and the Joseph P. Kennedy family stayed on
the 2nd floor before moving to London. During the Great Depression, Babe Ruth was a regular bar patron.
An autographed picture of Ruth hung in the bar until it disappeared in
the 1960s. In the 1940s, Edmund Wilson
lived in the hotel with novelist Mary
McCarthy.
Source:Wikipedia
Hotel
des Artistes, today
Hotel
des
Artistes Howard
Chandler Christy
1 West 67th St.
Built in 1918, this is one of the city's most famous
and illustrious buildings. The Hotel Des
Artistes is the largest "studio" building in the city and was
originally designed
as an artist's cooperative apartment building.
Famous past and present residents include Rudolph Valentino,
artist Norman Rockwell,
dancer Isadora
Duncan, Noel Coward,
former
NYC
mayor,
John
Lindsay, and actors Richard
Thomas and Joel Grey,
writer Fannie
Hurst, who
had a
very large triplex penthouse, and writer
Alexander Woollcott. Artist Howard Chandler Christy,
an
early resident, painted murals for the building's famous restaurant,
Café des Artistes.
135
CPW-The Langham
The
Langham
Mia Farrow
135 Central Park West
Built in 1905, The Langham’s luxury apartments have
been home to Maureen
O’Sullivan and Mia Farrow
(The apartment was
featured in the Woody
Allen film, Hannah and Her Sisters).
Other famous tenants have included Lee
Strausburg, Cyril Ritchard,
Merv Griffin and Carly Simon
and James
Taylor.
The Lucerne Hotel
Lucerne
Hotel
201 W 79th Street (corner of
Amsterdam Avenue)
Built in 1903, it was billed as “fireproof and quiet, in the pleasing
part of New York”.
In the early 20th century, the Lucerne was home to Eugene
O’Neill, who listed it as his address while away at school at
Princeton
University in 1907. His parents maintained a residence there.
After decades as kind of a second-rate hotel, the Lucerne was cleaned
up and redone, its terra cotta facade restored. Today, it looks
strikingly similar now to the way it did over a century ago.
Patchin Place today
Patchin
Place
e. e.
cummings
Located off 10th Street and Avenue of the
Americas Not an apartment building or a hotel, Patchin Place
is a gated cul-de-sac
with ten brick row houses that were built in 1848 or 1849.
In the early 20th century, Patchin Place became popular with writers
and artists for the privacy it offered in the middle of Bohemia. Indoor
plumbing, electricity, and steam heat were added in 1917. In 1920 the
houses were converted into small apartments.
Today it is a popular location for psychotherapists' offices.
Noted residents include:
Djuna Barnes (#5, 1941–1982)
Marlon Brando (ca.
1943, while rooming with his sister)
Louise Bryant (#1, with John Reed)
E. E. Cummings
(#4, 1923–1962)
Theodore Dreiser
Alyse Gregory
John Howard Lawson (16 years)
John Masefield
John Cowper Powys (#4, 1923–1929)
John Reed (#1, with Louise Bryant, began writing Ten Days That Shook
the World here) SOURCE:
Wikipedia
San Remo
today
San
Remo
Apartments
Rita Hayworth
145-146 Central Park West Built in 1930
There are two addresses because the building was designed such that
each half of the structure(northern and southern) is served by that
respective lobby. This landmark building has been the home to many
celebrities including Dustin Hoffman,
Mary Tyler
Moore, Raquel Welch, Bruce Willis, Demi
Moore, Steve Martin, Donald Sutherland, Paul Simon, Barry Manilow,
Elain May, Tony Randall, Robert Stigwood, Howold Arlen, Diane
Keaton, U2 Frontman, Bono and Rita Hayworth. Miss Hayworth lived
here
during the
last
years of her life in her daughter, Yazmin Khan’s, apartment. Steven Spielberg, Donna
Karan, Steve Jobs, Glenn Close, Eddie Cantor,
Robert Stigwood, Marshall Brickman, Jackie Leo, Don Hewitt, also
lived here.
Katherine
Hepburn's house at
244 E 49th St
Turtle Bay
Gardens
Katherine
Hepburn
48th and 49th between Second and Third
Avenue
Turtle Bay Gardens is made up mainly of beautiful
townhouses set back to back. They share a common garden the runs the
entire block and is hidden from
the street.
Prominent New Yorkers who have lived here include Henry Luce, the magazine publisher,
who lived at 234 E. 49th, Ruth Gordon
and Garson Kanin who lived at
242 E. 49th, and Katherine Hepburn
who owned number 244, on E. 49th St., for over 50 years. E. B. White was living at number 229
E. 48th when he wrote Charlotte's Web
in 1949.
The Warwick Hotel
The Warwick Hotel
Cary Grant
65 West 54th Street
This hotel's historical past includes some of the
more prominent
celebrities that were long-time residents including Cary Grant (who
resided in the hotel for over 12 years) and Mr. and Mrs. Irving Berlin. The Beatles stayed
at The Warwick during their first trip to New York,
and it was also home to Elvis Presley
whenever he was in New York City
for various appearances.
