| Astor House | |
|---|---|
 The Astor House in 1862, withSt. Paul's Chapel to the left andTrinity Church behind it | |
 Interactive map of Astor House | |
| General information | |
| Location | Manhattan,New York City, U.S. |
| Coordinates | 40°42′42.5″N74°0′30.8″W / 40.711806°N 74.008556°W /40.711806; -74.008556 |
| Inaugurated | 1836 |
| Demolished | 1913–1926 |
TheAstor House was a luxury hotel inNew York City. Located on the corner ofBroadway andVesey Street in what is now theCivic Center andTribeca neighborhoods 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.
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 what was then 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 ofBroadway between Vesey and Barclay Streets, across fromCity Hall Park and 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 graniteashlar withquoined corners 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 ahorsecar directly there from theMadison Square Depot of theNew York and Harlem Railroad.[7]
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 Brady lived there in the 1840s, andWilliam James was born there in 1842. In 1843, the Astor House hosted the recently marriedHenry Wadsworth Longfellow and his wife. The couple, who renewed their friendship with fellow patronFanny Kemble, also dined there withNathaniel Parker Willis and his wife during their stay.[10]
The Norwegian violinistOle Bull was a returning patron at the hotel on his American tours in the 1840s, 50s, and 60s.
Abraham Lincoln stayed there in February 1861 on his way to his inauguration[11] and gave an impromptu speech,[1] and in 1864Thurlow Weed ran 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 Semmes stayed 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 Yard where 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 Federation was founded at the hotel.[14]
In 1916,Charles Evans Hughes stayed there while his presidential bid stood in the balance.
The success of the Astor House invited competition. The 1853St Nicholas Hotel on Broadway atBroome Street was 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 Hotel facing 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 Astor redeveloped 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 Sawyer withArt Deco details.
Notes
Bibliography
Media related toAstor House at Wikimedia Commons
