The Astor Hotel is a hotel located in the Times Square area of ​​Manhattan, New York City, operating from 1904 to 1967. Former hotel sites, blocks bordered by Broadway, Astor Plaza, West 44th Street and West 45th Street , now occupied by a high-rise office building 54 floors, One Astor Plaza.
Video Hotel Astor (New York City)
Construction
With its well-decorated public spaces and roof garden, the Astor Hotel is regarded as the successor of the Waldorf-Astoria Astor family at 34th Street. William C. Muschenheim and his brother Frederick A. Muschenheim devised a plan for a large hotel in 1900. The area came to be known as Longacre Square and stands outside the boundaries of metropolitan life, the New York railway trade center. Muschenheim brothers became owners for landlords who were absent William Waldorf Astor, from whom they rented land. The hotel opened on 9 September 1904.
The 35,000 square feet (3,300m 2 ) Hotel Astor was built in two stages, in 1905 and 1909-1910, by the same architect in the same style. Once completed, this structure occupies the entire city block with a reported total cost of $ 7 million. Clinton Architects & amp; Russell has designed a number of Astor commissions; here they develop a very Paris-style "Beaux Arts" equipped with a copper-green mansard roof. The eleven stories contain 1000 guest rooms, with two more underground levels for extensive "backstage" functions, like a wine cellar.
Astor is an important element in the growth of Times Square and its character as an entertainment center. In 1904, the publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved his newspaper operations to a new tower on 42nd Street in the middle of Longacre Square, and Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr. to build a subway station there and rename Times Square. The Theater District will soon occupy a grand new auditorium along Forty-second Street, and electric lighting transforms the Broadway path into a "Great White Way".
The success of the Astor Hotel triggered the construction of a nearby Knickerbocker Hotel by another member of the Astor family two years later, even though the property became a commercial office space within a few years. Astor set the pattern for "a new species of popular hotels that soon gather around Times Square, a large amusement palace that caters to the crowds with scenographic interiors that reflect theatricality of the Great White Way."
Maps Hotel Astor (New York City)
Facilities
In its controlled exterior, the Astor displays a long list of exotic balloons and exotic restaurants: the Old New York lobby, the American Indian Grill Room decorated with artefacts collected with the help of the American Museum of Natural History, the Flemish smoking room, the Pompeiian billiard room, the Hunting Room decorated in the style of a sixteenth-century German Renaissance, and many other features.
The Big Ballroom (or Banquet Hall), on the ninth floor, opens with a dinner that is part of the Hudson-Fulton celebration. Measuring 50 x 85 feet (15 m² - 26 m), the Banquet Hall is decorated in Rococo style from Louis XV and features a high-arched arch ceiling in ivory and ivory white gold, supported by grouped birds. A gallery spanning the south and west sides, providing a great view of the room, which can accommodate 500 visitors.
The smaller ballroom, seating 250, is decorated in the Louis XVI neoclassical style and can be combined with a larger ballroom. There is still another room adjacent, "Hall of Higher Education", can also open to the ballroom so that the combined room can accommodate 1100 people. The Palm Garden, or "L'Orangerie", located behind the first floor lobby, is meant to represent an Italian garden. The ceiling, painted to represent the Mediterranean sky, is partially concealed by pergolas pretending to be wild. Blue lighting, chandeliers draped on vines, fern baskets wobbled, and beautiful photographs from outside the home further enhance perception.
The rooftop garden, with its stage and observatory, is one of a number built in the city between 1880 and Larangan, among them the American Theater on Eighth Avenue, the park at Stanford White's 1890 Madison Square Garden, and Paradise Roof Garden opened by Oscar Hammerstein I on in 1900. In the following years, the famous landscape architect Takeo Shiota redesigned the roof of the North Garden with a Japanese theme.
The original artwork in the lobby includes four murals by William de Leftwich Dodge depicting Ancient and Modern New York , and a statue of Three Graces by the sculptor Isidore Konti, a resemblance of the Model American Audrey Munson.
Social history
As a popular meeting place and landmark of New York City, Astor has a place in popular culture for decades, from the extended double entender song "She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor", for her appearance in the 1945 movie The Clock , which provides a good view of the war-era lobby (although reconstructed in Hollywood). Among many other musicians, Tommy Dorsey's era swing leader appeared regularly on stage, and there Frank Sinatra made an early New York appearance with the Dorsey band from 1940 to 1942.
In 1947, John Ciampa's stuntman climbed the outside of the hotel as part of the publicity way for Sunbrock Rodeo and Thrill Circus. The postcard of 1947, the Hotel Astor claims "1000 rooms, 1000 baths" and as "The Crossroads of the World"
Beginning in the 1910s, Astor Bar earned a reputation as a gay meeting place. During World War II, the Astor Bar was one of three "world-renowned" American hotel bar for their war atmosphere, alongside Top of the Mark at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, and a men's bar at the Los Angeles Biltmore. Unlike the flamboyant evening scenes in the automat, gay visitors at the Astor Bar are welcomed, allocated to the entire side of the oval bar, and are expected to be wise (by time standards). Therefore, "Astor maintains its public reputation as a very respectable meeting place in Times Square, while its reputation as a meeting bar and gay pick-up is considered a legendary proportion." The bar was subsequently enshrined in Cole Porter's song "Well, Did You Evah!", Which included the line, "Have you heard that Mimsie Starr/Just pinched at the Astor Bar?" The ribald song "She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor" explores the same theme.
Next year
The hotel was completely renovated in 1935, and again in 1949. It was sold to real estate entrepreneur William Zeckendorf on September 1, 1954. However, he resold it only two weeks later, on 15 September 1954, to Sheraton Hotels, whose name was changed was Sheraton-Astor . Zeckendorf repurchased the hotel in December 1957, regaining control in March 1958 and returning it to its original name. During this period, the hotel is managed by Prince Serge Obolensky. As an indirect result of Zeckendorf's bankruptcy in 1965, Astor sold for $ 10.5 million in 1966. It was closed and destroyed in 1967 by Sam Minskoff & Children. The site is now occupied by a 54-story skyscraper designed by Der Scutt of Ely J. Kahn & amp; Jacobs and finished in 1972.
See also
- A list of former hotels in Manhattan
References
External links
- Media related to Astor Hotel (New York City) on Wikimedia Commons
- Astor Collection at the University of Virginia
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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