The Olcott Hotel is on West 72nd Street in New York City's Upper West Side. [1] It was built by the Lapidus Engineering Company beginning in late 1925. The edifice was one of a number of structures constructed at the time from Central Park West to Columbus Avenue on 72nd Street, in Manhattan. The Fairfield Hotel was another building going up concurrently. Its builder was Louis Israelson and Associates. [2] The Olcott Hotel was sixteen stories when it was completed. [3] It opened in 1930. [4]
Ralph Reck, manager of the Olcott Hotel, was elected chairman of the Board of the Hotel Executive Club in January 1937. [5] In August 1946 the hotel was sold to Atwood C. Wolfe for cash above a purchase money first mortgage of $850,000 made by the Travelers Insurance Company. Its property value was assessed at $1,250,000. Hotel Olcott, Inc., was represented by attorney Abraham J. Halprin. The property was sold to Wolfe through George W. Warneicke. The buyer was represented by Dreyer & Traub. [6]
The Olcott Hotel was owned by a syndicate composed of E. Fishbein, S. Mendick, and M. Kaplan in 1956. In September of that year they purchased the Oliver Cromwell apartment-hotel, which was located at 12 West Seventy-Second Street near Central Park West. The syndicate leased the Oliver Cromwell, a twenty-nine story edifice, from the Olicrom Operating Corporation, who represented Herbert Riesner. The deal was brokered by Des Gabor, vice-president of M. Morgenthau-Seixas Company. The title was insured by the City Title Insurance Company. [7]
Joseph Slutsky, 76, owned the Olcott Hotel along with his sons, Ben and Julius, at the time of his death in November 1958. Slutsky founded the Nevele Hotel in New York City in 1901. The Slutskys formerly owned the Raleigh Hotel and Metropole Hotel in Miami, Florida. [8]
Eugene Fishbein managed the Olcott Hotel in 1980. At the time he had been in charge of operations for twenty-five years. In 1980 all units in the hotel had pantries or kitchenettes. Almost two thirds of its four hundred and fifty units were rent stabilized. Long-term occupants paid $300 to $450 per month for studio apartments. One bedroom apartments cost from $400 to $600 monthly. Incoming tenants paid fifty percent more than the stabilized rates. New tenants tended to be transient, people from abroad or members of the entertainment industry. They stayed only two to three weeks on average. [9]
In 1995 Olcott Hotel owners offered to pay $600,000 to restore the building if the New York City Planning Department agreed to legalize its twenty-nine professional suites and one hundred twenty-two transient hotel rooms. The hotel had been operating for more than thirty years without proper zoning permission. Lee Rosen, the building's general manager, wanted the building to remain exactly as it is. [10]
Isidore H. Bander, 66, vice-president of McKesson & Robbins, a drug company, either fell or jumped to his death from the roof of the Olcott Hotel in September 1951. His body landed on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. He had told his wife he was going for a walk but instead took an elevator to the roof. [3]
In 1976 Jeff Bayonne purchased the Manhattan Bridge Club, a duplicate bridge club which had been on the sixteenth floor of the hotel for decades. In 1992 he acquired the Gotham, a declining contract bridge club across the hall. [1]
In October 1980 Mark David Chapman stayed at the Waldorf Astoria, the YMCA, and the Olcott Hotel before he assassinated John Lennon.
In the mid 80's cult icon Tiny Tim and then manager Rick Hendrix lived at the Olcott Hotel for a short period of time. The latter residence was just a block away from The Dakota apartments. [11]
Nina Youshkevitch, a distinguished ballet dancer and teacher, maintained a dance studio in the hotel for many years, and was also a resident.
Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) featured the hotel in a scene. [12]
The Dakota, also known as the Dakota Apartments, is a cooperative apartment building at 1 West 72nd Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The Dakota was constructed between 1880 and 1884 in the Renaissance Revival style and was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh for businessman Edward Cabot Clark. The building was one of the first large developments on the Upper West Side and is the oldest remaining luxury apartment building in New York City. The building is a National Historic Landmark and has been designated a city landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. The building is also a contributing property to the Central Park West Historic District.
Henry Janeway Hardenbergh was an American architect, best known for his hotels and apartment buildings, and as a "master of a new building form — the skyscraper."
23rd Street is a broad thoroughfare in the New York City borough of Manhattan, one of the major two-way, east-west streets in the borough's grid. As with Manhattan's other "crosstown" streets, it is divided into its east and west sections at Fifth Avenue. The street runs from Avenue C and FDR Drive in the east to Eleventh Avenue in the west.
The Ansonia is a building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, located at 2109 Broadway, between 73rd and 74th Streets. It was originally built as a residential hotel by William Earle Dodge Stokes, the Phelps-Dodge copper heir and shareholder in the Ansonia Clock Company, and it was named after his grandfather, the industrialist Anson Greene Phelps. In 1897, Stokes commissioned French architect Paul Emile Duboy to design the grandest hotel in Manhattan.
The Majestic is a cooperative apartment building at 115 Central Park West, between 71st and 72nd Streets, adjacent to Central Park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was constructed from 1930 to 1931 and was designed by the firm of Irwin S. Chanin in the Art Deco style. The Majestic is 30 stories tall, with twin towers rising from a 19-story base. The building is a contributing property to the Central Park West Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a New York City designated landmark.
Waterside Plaza is a residential and business complex located on the East River in the Kips Bay section of Manhattan, New York City. It was formerly a Mitchell-Lama Housing Program-funded rental project.
The Royalton Hotel is a hotel at 44 West 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States. The hotel, opened in 1898, was designed by architecture firm Rossiter & Wright and developed by civil engineer Edward G. Bailey. The 13-story building is made of brick, stone, terracotta, and iron. The hotel's lobby, which connects 43rd and 44th Streets, contains a bar and restaurant. The upper stories originally featured 90 apartments, but these were replaced with 205 guestrooms when Philippe Starck and Gruzen Samton Steinglass Architects converted the Royalton to a boutique hotel in the 1980s.
The Studebaker Building is a former structure at 1600 Broadway on the northeast corner at 48th Street in Manhattan, New York City. It was erected by the Juilliard Estate, in 1902, between Broadway and 7th Avenue, in the area north of Times Square. It was demolished in 2004 to make room for an apartment tower, a twenty- five story, 136 unit, luxury condominium designed by architect Einhorn Yaffee Prescott.
Bretton Hall is a twelve-story residential building at 2350 Broadway, spanning from West 85th to 86th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City.
The Silk Centre was an area of business property, composed of buildings and lofts, which opened in Manhattan, in 1924. It was adjacent to a car-barn site, numerous clothing firms, and advertising agents located within a block or two of this corner. Harper & Brothers was also situated on East 33rd Street.
The Taft Hotel building is a 22-story pre-war Spanish Renaissance structure that occupies the eastern side of Seventh Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets, just north of Times Square, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. In its modern configuration, it features two separate portions with their own entrance on 51st Street. The larger portion is devoted to the residential condominium called Executive Plaza, with each of its 440 units being privately owned. Certain units are rented by their owners to the public. A smaller portion of the building contains The Michelangelo, a Starhotels hotel.
Chelsea Corners was an apartment complex built in 1931 at 15th Street and 16th Street, in Chelsea, Manhattan. It is currently a co-op. The first building was completed at 200 West 16th Street in May 1931. The development was never finished, but its completion was planned for fall 1931. The Great Depression caused it to remain unfinished.
Burton Arms Apartments was an edifice completed in December 1922, located at 2115 Walton Avenue and 181st Street (Manhattan) in the Bronx. The building was one block from Lexington Avenue (Manhattan)-Jerome Avenue. Advertised as the most beautiful apartment house in New York City, it could be reached via the 6th Avenue (Manhattan) - 9th Avenue (Manhattan) subway or the L at Burnside Avenue. 3,4, or 5 room rentals were available. Burton Arms Apartments is important as an early 1920s structure which provided comfortable living quarters as well as accommodations for businesses.
The Hale Building is an office structure which opened in 1927 at 11 East 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Fred T. Ley & Company built the edifice and Shreve & Lamb were its architects. It was owned by the Eleven East 44th Street Corporation. Hale Building is significant as an important residence for offices on the Lower East Side during the late 1920s and the Great Depression era.
1049 Fifth Avenue is a 23-floor luxury condominium apartment building located in the Upper East Side, New York City. Built in 1928 as the Adams Hotel, the building underwent extensive renovation in its conversion to residential condominiums during the years 1990-1993. When the apartments were first offered for sale in 1991, they were the highest-priced residential apartments ever listed in New York City. Their sale prices set city records in 1993 and 1994.
Row NYC Hotel is a hotel at 700 Eighth Avenue, between 44th and 45th Streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The hotel is 27 stories tall with 1,331 rooms. Designed by Schwartz & Gross, with Herbert J. Krapp as consulting architect, it was developed by brothers Henry and Irwin Chanin and opened on February 1, 1928, as the Hotel Lincoln. The hotel largely retains its original brick-and-terracotta facade. The interior spaces, which originally included a lobby and various restaurants on the first three stories, have been redesigned substantially over the years.
257 Central Park West is a co-op apartment building on the southwest corner of 86th Street and Central Park West in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was designed by the firm of Mulliken and Moeller and built by Gotham Building & Construction between 1905 and 1906.
Hotel Paris is a historic residential building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City.
Albany Street is a short street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The street runs west-to-east from the Battery Park City Esplanade along the Hudson River to Greenwich Street, passing through South End Avenue and West Street on the way. The street has a walkway connection to the Rector Street Bridge which crosses West Street.
The Hotel Beacon is a Beaux-Arts, 24-story building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, designed by Walter W. Ahlschlager. It was built in 1928 at 2130 Broadway, at the corner with 75th Street, on the site of the Tilden Club House and the Dakota Stables.
