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Astor House

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Coordinates:40°42′42.5″N74°0′30.8″W/ 40.711806°N 74.008556°W/40.711806; -74.008556
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For the hotel in Shanghai, seeAstor House Hotel (Shanghai).For the hotel in Golden, Colorado, seeAstor House (Colorado).
The Astor House in 1862, withSt. Paul's Chapelto the left andTrinity Churchbehind it
Map
General information
LocationManhattan,New York City,U.S.
Coordinates40°42′42.5″N74°0′30.8″W/ 40.711806°N 74.008556°W/40.711806; -74.008556
Inaugurated1836
Demolished1913–1926

TheAstor Housewas a luxury hotel inNew York City.Located on the corner ofBroadwayandVesey Streetin what is now theCivic CenterandTribecaneighborhoods ofLower Manhattan,it opened in 1836 and soon became the best-known hotel in America. Part of it was demolished in 1913; the rest was demolished in 1926.

History and description

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The Astor House was built byJohn Jacob Astor,who assembled the lots around his former house until he had purchased the full block in the heart of the city's most fashionable residential district. Construction began in 1834,[1]and the hotel opened in June 1836 as the Park Hotel. It was located on the west side ofBroadwaybetween Vesey and Barclay Streets, across fromCity Hall Parkand diagonally across from the offices of theNew York Herald.The building was designed byIsaiah Rogers,who in 1829 had designed the first luxury hotel in the United States, theTremont House, in Boston.The large four-square block[2]was detailed in theGreek Revival style,faced with pale graniteashlarwithquoinedcorners treated as at Tremont House, as embedded Doric pillars, and a central entrance flanked by Greek Doric columns supporting a short length of entablature.[3]

Astor House contained 309 rooms in five stories, with servant's rooms on the sixth floor, whose mezzanine windows opened in the frieze below the building's cornice. It hadgaslights– the gas was produced in the hotel's own plant[4]– and bathing and toilet facilities on each floor, with the water pumped up by steam engines.[1]Its tree-shaded central courtyard was covered over in 1852 by an elliptical vaulted cast-iron and glass "rotunda" designed byJames Bogardus,[5]that under the direction of its proprietor "Col." Charles A. Stetson (1837–1877) was the city's most stylish luncheon place for gentlemen. It featured a curving bar, and side dining rooms entered from Vesey Street or Barclay Street. Guests could order from 30 meat and fish dishes offered daily.[4]Although by the 1850s some restaurants allowed men and women to dine together, and others had special ladies' dining room with separate entrances to reserved drawing rooms, the Astor House would not admit unaccompanied women to enter, a policy which prevented prostitutes from nearby brothels from plying their trade in the hotel.[6]

Guests to the hotel could take ahorsecardirectly there from theMadison Square Depotof theNew York and Harlem Railroad.[7]


From left to right:St. Paul's Chapel,Astor House,U.S. Post Office,c.1905

Notable guests and events

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Building art from a BREAKFAST MENU (held by) ASTOR HOUSE (at) LADIES' ORDINARY on Friday, August 25, 1843

For decades, the Astor House was the best known and most prestigious hotel in the country[8][9]and had an international reputation as the place where renowned literary figures and statesmen met.[1]

Mathew Bradylived there in the 1840s, andWilliam Jameswas born there in 1842. In 1843, the Astor House hosted the recently marriedHenry Wadsworth Longfellowand his wife. The couple, who renewed their friendship with fellow patronFanny Kemble,also dined there withNathaniel Parker Willisand his wife during their stay.[10]

The Norwegian violinistOle Bullwas a returning patron at the hotel on his American tours in the 1840s, 50s, and 60s.

Abraham Lincolnstayed there in February 1861 on his way to his inauguration[11]and gave an impromptu speech,[1]and in 1864Thurlow Weedran Lincoln's re-election campaign from the hotel.[12]Afterwards, on November 25, 1864, Confederate sympathizers set fires in 13 major hotels in the city, many of them along Broadway, including the Astor House; the fires were soon put out.[13]American Civil War Confederate AdmiralRaphael Semmesstayed at Astor House twice. His first stay was in March 1861, on the eve of the war, when he was searching for ships to buy for the fledgling Confederate Navy. Nearly five years later, on December 27, 1865, he again spent the night, this time as a prisoner of the North, while being escorted to theWashington Navy Yardwhere Federal authorities would decide whether to put him on trial.

The hotel was used as a safe haven during theGreat Blizzard of 1888.On April 5, 1913, theUnited States Soccer Federationwas founded at the hotel.[14]

In 1916,Charles Evans Hughesstayed there while his presidential bid stood in the balance.

The Astor House Building, designed byMarc Eidlitz & Sons

Competition and decline

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The success of the Astor House invited competition. The 1853St Nicholas Hotelon Broadway atBroome Streetwas built for $1 million and offered the innovation of central heating that circulated warmed air through registers to every room. It was said to have ended the Astor House's preeminence in New York hostelry.[15]TheMetropolitan Hotel,opened in 1852 just north of the St Nicholas at Prince Street, was equally luxurious. But the new hotel to put all others in the shade was theFifth Avenue Hotelfacing Madison Square.[16]

In the face of its competitors, by the early 1870s the Astor House was considered old-fashioned and unappealing, and was principally used by businessmen. Still, it remained such a seemingly permanent fixture of New York, that it was included in a fantasy short story by J. A. Mitchell,The Last American,set in the far future, when Persian explorers in the ruins of New York come upon "an upturned slab" inscribed "Astor House": "I pointed it out to Nofuhl and we bent over it with eager eyes... 'The inscription is Old English,' he said. '" House "signified a dwelling, but the word" Astor "I know not. It was probably the name of a deity, and here was his temple'".[17]

The south section was demolished in 1913[18]in order to construct the Vesey Street tunnel for theBroadway subway line,which runs beneath the site; and Bogardus' luncheon pavilion went with it.[19]Vincent Astorredeveloped the site at 217 Broadway as theAstor House Building,a modest seven stories tall, in 1915–1916.[20]The rest was demolished in 1926 and the site rebuilt as theTransportation Building,which was designed byYork and SawyerwithArt Decodetails.

See also

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References

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Notes

  1. ^abcdStone, May N. "Astor House" inJackson, Kenneth T.,ed. (2010).The Encyclopedia of New York City(2nd ed.). New Haven:Yale University Press.ISBN978-0-300-11465-2.,p.73
  2. ^"The simple, square, unornamented architecture of the Astor House, makes to my notion, the best appearance of any building in New York, observedWalt Whitman(Whitman,Whitman in 1850: Three Uncollected ArticlesR.G. Silver, ed, (1951).
  3. ^"The Astor House in 1900";"Bootblacks before the entrance of Astor House, 1896",photograph byAlice Austen.
  4. ^abBurrows & Wallace (1999), pp.600-601
  5. ^Gayle, Margot and Gayle, Carol,Cast-iron architecture in Americap. 117f, 1901 photograph of the "rotunda", p. 118.
  6. ^Burrows & Wallace (1999), p.814
  7. ^Burrows & Wallace (1999), p.656
  8. ^Gray, Christopher"Streetscapes: Where Lincoln Tossed and Turned"The New York Times(September 24, 2009)
  9. ^Burrows & Wallace (1999), p.436
  10. ^Tharp, Louise Hall.The Appletons of Beacon Hill.Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973: 241–242.
  11. ^Strong, George Templeton(1962).Diary of the Civil War.New York: Macmillan Company. p. 101.
  12. ^Burrows & Wallace (1999), p.902
  13. ^Burrows & Wallace (1999), p.903
  14. ^Jack Bell (April 2, 2013)."US Soccer Celebrates 100 Years".New York Times.RetrievedAugust 5,2021.
  15. ^Buhdin, Jeremiah (June 25, 2013)."The Most Luxurious Hotels of New York City's Past".Curbed NY.RetrievedDecember 4,2015.
  16. ^Morris, Lloyd R.Incredible New York1975:5.
  17. ^Mitchell, J. A."The Last American"(New York, 1889)
  18. ^"Farewell menu, 29 May 1913".certainbooks.RetrievedJune 12,2023.
  19. ^Gayle, p. 120.
  20. ^Dunlap, David W. (July 7, 1999)"Commercial Property; Former Astor Office Building Looks Back, and Up"The New York Times

Bibliography

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