Empire Hotel
1889 Broadway | also 44 West 63rd Street | Lincoln Square | built 1923
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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.
- 1894
Developer William Noble opens the first Hotel Empire facing Empire Square, then loses it to foreclosure
William Noble's lavish Hotel Empire opened on September 25, 1894, on the lot where today's Empire Hotel stands, facing the small park at Broadway, Columbus Avenue and 63rd Street. The hotel took its name from that park, Empire Square, which was later renamed Lincoln Square and then Dante Park. The project proved ahead of its time, because the neighborhood would not need transient hotels for years. Noble lost the property in foreclosure, and it changed hands repeatedly until 1908, when the Philadelphia businessman Herbert Du Puy bought it.
Source: landmarkwest.org
- 1922
Du Puy drops a rear addition and has the old hotel torn down for a 14-floor, $4 million replacement
About two months after a sensational murder in the hotel, Herbert Du Puy announced on April 15, 1922 a 10-story addition at the rear, a $500,000 extension to be designed by Severance & Van Alen. He then changed his mind. By November 12, 1922, The New York Times reported, the old hotel was gone and a 14-floor replacement by the Pittsburgh architect Frederick I. Merrick, priced at about $4 million, was going up.
Source: landmarkwest.org
- 1923
The rebuilt Empire Hotel opens with a red neon sign on its roof
According to the hotel historian Stanley Turkel, the new Empire Hotel opened on December 5, 1923, with a red neon sign reading Hotel Empire on the rooftop. Herbert DuPuy had torn down the earlier building in 1922 to build it. Prices in 1935 were modest: a room for one person with a private toilet and lavatory cost $2.00 a day, and a suite with parlor, bedroom and bath cost $5.00. Garage storage for a guest's car cost 50 cents a day.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1934
Picketing forces the Hotel Empire to serve Black customers in its coffee shop
For more than a decade the hotel's cafe and dining room had served only white patrons. That ended in the summer of 1934, after Lydia Baker walked into the coffee shop and was turned away. Picketing began on August 1 and lasted four days, a mass meeting of several hundred workers gathered at the entrance on August 5, and a committee of four, including Baker, demanded to see the managers. On August 6 The Daily Worker reported that the hotel had served Black customers in its coffee shop for the first time.
Source: landmarkwest.org
- 1936
Composer Aaron Copland moves into a small tenth-floor studio at the Empire
From 1936 to 1947 Aaron Copland lived at the Hotel Empire in a small studio on the tenth floor that held a piano, his most important home in the city. He also rented a loft at 113 West 63rd Street, later demolished for Lincoln Center. Pieces he finished in these years include Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo, Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man (all 1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944), which won him a Pulitzer Prize in Music.
Source: NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project
- 1961
Bobby Fischer and Samuel Reshevsky play their closely followed chess matches in the Empire's ballroom
In May 1950 a syndicate that also ran the Plymouth Hotel on West 49th Street leased the Empire. Its new operators drew national attention by holding the first of the annual United States chess championships in the ballroom. The August 1961 matches between Bobby Fischer and Samuel Reshevsky drew the closest following, and the yearly tournaments continued at the hotel through the late 1960s.
Source: landmarkwest.org
- 2007
The Empire reopens after a three-year renovation that kept six longtime residents in place
As the hotel prepared for a major renovation in 2004, six permanent residents resisted, and the owner, the Chetrit Group, could not go ahead without a non-harassment certificate from the city. A compromise reached with Councilwoman Gale Brewer let the residents stay in single-room-occupancy quarters, rent-free for as long as they remained. When the hotel reopened on August 16, 2007, David W. Dunlap of The New York Times noted a refurbished two-story lobby with a deliberately 1950s kitsch look and a new rooftop bar and restaurant.
Source: landmarkwest.org
- 2010
Gossip Girl makes the Empire Chuck Bass's hotel and lifts its bookings
The CW teen drama Gossip Girl featured the Empire prominently as a hotel belonging to the character Chuck Bass, played by Ed Westwick. By January 2010 reports said the exposure had raised bookings by five to ten percent, and a menu of Gossip Girl cocktails was created. The red neon sign glowing outside Kramer's apartment on Seinfeld was likewise modeled on the hotel's sign.
“…the hotel had seen a five- to 10-percent increase in bookings due to the exposure it gained from the show…”
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- The Empire Hotel (New York City)Wikipedia
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