George Washington Hotel

135 East 23rd Street | also 23 Lexington Avenue, 31 Lexington Avenue, 140 East 24th Street | Gramercy | built 1929

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The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1929

    March 18

    Frank Andrews and John Peterkin design a 16-story, 630-room hotel on Lexington Avenue

    The New York Times reported in March 1929 that Harry Barth's corporations would build a $3 million hotel at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street. Frank M. Andrews and John B. Peterkin designed a brick tower in a 1920s take on Renaissance style, with a three-story stone base of polychrome terra cotta. A double-height entrance, borrowing from a triumphal arch, had freestanding Doric columns.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1929

    December 29

    The City College Club fits out its clubrooms inside the new George Washington Hotel

    A major tenant of the new George Washington Hotel, the City College Club, had a hand in designing its clubrooms, which had a private entrance on East 24th Street. Its main room, 50 feet by 30, was done in a Dutch Colonial style, using models and documents at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as guides. A tiled fireplace carrying the College of the City of New York insignia was made in Holland, and the suite also held a library, a card room and a room for billiards and bridge.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1930

    Harry Barth opens the George Washington Hotel as it bankrupts him

    Hotel supplier Harry Barth spends $3 million building the sixteen-story George Washington Hotel at 23 Lexington Avenue, designed by Frank Mills Andrews and John B. Peterkin. Construction begins just before the October 1929 stock market crash, and Barth is forced into bankruptcy even as the hotel opens the following year.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1933

    Congress investigates a Nazi sympathizer group headquartered at the hotel

    The hotel houses the headquarters of the Kulturbund, a Nazi social organization, drawing scrutiny from a congressional investigation into Nazi activity in the United States. The episode unfolds only a few years after the hotel's opening, during the same Depression-era stretch that had already bankrupted its original developer.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1939

    W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood stay at the hotel

    English-born novelist Christopher Isherwood and British poet W.H. Auden take rooms at the George Washington Hotel in January 1939. Isherwood soon moves on to California, but Auden stays and later recommends the hotel to composer Benjamin Britten ahead of Britten's own trip to America that June.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1941

    German Jewish refugee children stay at the hotel after arriving in New York

    The hotel that had housed a Nazi organization's headquarters in 1933 later sheltered refugees. A German-Jewish children's aid group brought 1,000 young refugees to America in 1941, and some of them spent a few days at the George Washington Hotel. There they received medical attention before being placed with relatives, Jewish foster families or temporary housing.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  7. 1974

    February 28

    Tony Shafrazi, a $15-a-week tenant, sprays Picasso's Guernica at MoMA

    A self-described artist, Tony Shafrazi rented a room at the hotel for $15 a week in 1974. On February 28 he walked into the Museum of Modern Art and sprayed red paint across Picasso's Guernica, writing the words "Kill Lies All". As a guard seized him he demanded that the curator be called, saying he was an artist. The painting was later fully conserved.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  8. 1979

    Captain Video actor Al Hodge is found dead in his room at the hotel

    Al Hodge started as a radio actor, once playing the Green Hornet, and became a children's hero as the title character of the television series Captain Video from 1948 until it ended in 1956. He was so identified with the role that work dried up, and he ended up living at the George Washington Hotel on Social Security. The New York Times reported in March 1979 that he was found dead there at 66.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  9. 1991

    Dee Dee Ramone and Richard Barone take rooms in the residential hotel

    By 1991 the hotel had become a shabby single-room-occupancy building. Ramones founder Dee Dee Ramone and the musician Richard Barone both had rooms there. Ramone mentions the hotel in his memoir Poison Heart, and Barone's book Frontman recalls rooms with barely space to stand and a man collapsed beside the lobby elevator.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  10. 1995

    July 2

    Educational Housing signs a 15-year lease and the hotel becomes student housing

    A New York Times report of July 2, 1995, said a student-housing provider, Educational Housing, had taken the hotel on a lease running 15 years. The company promised to inspect each room twice yearly and repaint wherever lead paint peeled. Three years later the paper reported that 600 beds went to students of the School of Visual Arts.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  11. 2018

    AllianceBernstein converts the hotel into Freehand New York

    Investment firm AllianceBernstein remodels the George Washington Hotel into Freehand New York, hiring design studio Roman and Williams to rework the interiors for a hip "artist community" feel. The renovation keeps the lobby's Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington in place, having it professionally conserved and rehung in the hotel's bar.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  12. 2025

    Preservation groups ask the city to consider landmarking the George Washington Hotel building

    The building made it onto the National Register of Historic Places in 2019. In 2025 the Historic Districts Council, working with the Rose Hill/Kips Bay Coalition, asked the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission to evaluate it for designation as an individual landmark.

    “In 2025, the Historic Districts Council, in partnership with the Rose Hill/Kips Bay Coalition, requested the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission evaluate the building…”

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 40 buildings with stories in Gramercy