Hotel Van Rensselaer

17 East 11th Street | also 13 East 11th Street | Greenwich Village | built 1903

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

  1. 1901

    The Hotel Van Rensselaer is built as the quieter of two neighboring hotels

    The city's 1969 report on the Greenwich Village Historic District describes the Hotel Van Rensselaer as the smaller, more restrained of two hotels side by side, built a year before the Hotel Alabama to its west. Its first two floors are rusticated stone with paired windows, and its round-arched doorway is flanked by free-standing columns carrying lanterns. Roman brick and pilasters with swagged Ionic capitals rise above, topped by a classical attic story and a modillion cornice.

    “More restrained than its neighbor to the west, the smaller original Hotel Van Rensselaer was built the previous year…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1902

    April

    Developer Leopold Wertheim builds the Van Rensselaer and leases it to the Municipal Realty Company

    Leopold Wertheim was putting up the Van Rensselaer apartment building on the site of two older buildings at 17 and 19 East 11th Street when he bought 13 and 15 next door in April 1902. The Municipal Realty Company had leased the Van Rensselaer while it was rising, and the New-York Tribune reported talks to lease the neighboring Alabama and make the two hotels one. Those negotiations fell through in 1902.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1912

    James E. Knott buys both hotels and advertises them together as the Van Rensselaer

    J. C. Lawrence, proprietor of the Van Rensselaer, acquired the Alabama in 1906 and ran the two under one management, and a 1909 ad pitched them as "In the Midst of Aristocracy." Around 1912 James E. Knott of the Knott Corporation bought both and listed them as the Hotel Van Rensselaer. An advertisement from that year billed it as the best hotel south of Fourteenth Street, with weekly, monthly, seasonal or yearly rentals starting at $15 with meals.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1950

    October

    The Knott family sells the Van Rensselaer after four decades, keeping its city home there

    David H. Knott sold the property to Nathan Wilson in October 1950, four decades after his father bought the two hotels. The New York Times reported that the sale was conditioned on the Knott family continuing to live in the building. Wilson planned to alter the apartment building into smaller suites, though the renovations did not join the Van Rensselaer and the Alabama inside.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1998

    February 6

    Yeshiva University buys most of the building's co-op apartments for law students

    In 1984 the Van Rensselaer and the Alabama were connected at the lobby, their apartments renovated, and soon after turned into a cooperative. On February 6, 1998, The New York Times reported that a majority of the 94 owners in the two-building, 114-unit co-op had individually sold their apartments to Yeshiva University. The university paid $11.6 million for 93 studios and one-bedrooms to house students of its Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, and spent another $2 million on renovations.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

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All 518 buildings with stories in Greenwich Village