The Biltmore Hotel
335 Madison Avenue | also 25 East 43rd Street, 337 Madison Avenue, 40 Vanderbilt Avenue | Midtown | built 1914
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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.
- 1912
Tenants plan their own apartments on the Biltmore's upper floors
Plans for the hotel set aside a dozen apartments of eight to twelve rooms on the 18th through 20th floors, which tenants were to build to designs by their own architects, with quarters for maids. Meals would come from a hotel kitchen rather than suite kitchens. Planned residents included architect Whitney Warren, McKim, Mead & White partner William Rutherford Mead, circus owner William Washington Cole and railroad chairman William H. Newman, with several tenants already signed at $10,000 to $15,000 a year.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1913
Warren and Wetmore's Biltmore Hotel opens beside Grand Central
Architects Warren and Wetmore designed the Italian Renaissance Revival Biltmore Hotel to complement the newly built Grand Central Terminal next door. Construction began in March 1913, and the hotel, named after the Vanderbilt family's Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, opened on December 31, 1913, at a cost of $5.5 million.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1914
Manager Gustav Baumann is found dead in the roof garden
Gustav Baumann, who ran the Biltmore, made a habit of walking the building from the bottom floor up to the roof each morning. After visiting the carpenter shop on the 22nd floor he was due to inspect the waiters in the Italian Garden, where waiter Frederick Rugen found his body on a path. It was surmised that he had leaned out to check on them and lost his balance.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1915
The Italian Garden becomes New York's first open-air hotel ice rink
In December 1915 the roof garden over Vanderbilt Avenue was turned into the Biltmore Ice Gardens. The New-York Tribune reported that the first open-air skating rink ever built in a New York hotel would open the next day, at a cost of about $10,000. The 50-by-75-foot oval of real ice had colored lanterns at night and a glass tea room warmed by steam heat and a fire.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1918
Secret Service agents arrest a hotel guest as a suspected German spy
Despina Davidovitch Storch, a 23-year-old Turkish-born woman formerly married to a French army officer, checked into the Biltmore in 1918 without knowing agents had followed her for two years. On March 18 she, two men and another woman were arrested and handed to the French government. The Evening World said the arrests were believed to have torn a vital part of the German spy system, which Count von Bernstorff had financed.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1919
A widow's jewels vanish from the hotel's front-desk safe
Regina Milhiser, whose husband Clarence died on May 20, 1919, while the couple were staying at the Biltmore, gave her jewelry to the front desk that evening for the hotel safe. A month later a bundle was missing, and the management offered a $10,000 reward. James E. Foye, who had handled the box, was charged, and at his 1920 trial she said the 82 pearls and diamond clasp shown to her were part of a $325,000 necklace.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1927
Cuba's President Machado stays at the Biltmore as an official city guest
In April 1927 President Gerardo Machado of Cuba stayed at the hotel, which was decorated with the flags of both countries, as the official guest of New York City. Governor Al Smith came to greet him. The Daily Worker objected to the royal welcome, running a headline on April 27 that called him the murderer of 200 island unionists and a guest of the mayor and financiers.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1932
Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic National Committee run campaigns from the Biltmore
Democratic chairman James A. Farley set up a command post at the hotel in the 1930s, and the Democratic National Committee ran its presidential campaigns from the Biltmore in 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944 and 1948. Franklin D. Roosevelt had his campaign headquarters there in 1932, 1936 and 1940. The party kept the entire second floor until 1962, and party figures such as Farley and Gene Tunney met in the Turkish baths.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1942
Zionist leaders convene the Biltmore Conference
In 1942, American and international Zionist leaders met at the Biltmore Hotel in a gathering that became known as the Biltmore Conference, adopting a program calling for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The hotel had also become an unofficial base for the Democratic National Committee, which ran presidential campaigns from its rooms.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1960
Khrushchev and Cyrus Eaton lunch at the Biltmore, drawing widespread protests
In 1960 the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and the industrialist Cyrus S. Eaton had lunch at the hotel. The meeting drew widespread protests.
“Soviet president Nikita Khrushchev and industrialist Cyrus S. Eaton ate lunch at the hotel in 1960, drawing widespread protests.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1981
The hotel closes abruptly and is gutted for offices
The Biltmore Hotel closed on August 14, 1981, after decades as one of Manhattan's premier hotels. Developer Paul Milstein demolished the interior and converted the structure into Bank of America Plaza, which reopened on May 15, 1984; the building was later renamed 22 Vanderbilt Avenue.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2018
The historic lobby clock resurfaces in a coffee shop
After Bank of America moved its headquarters out in 2010, the former hotel's ground floor was redesigned in 2018 as a tech-startup hub with a rooftop terrace and gym. The Biltmore's original Palm Court clock survives behind the counter of the building's Clock Coffeeshop, and an underground garage still shows the yellow brick and Guastavino tile of the old hotel.
Source: Forgotten New York
Further reading
- New York Biltmore HotelWikipedia
- SECRETS OF THE BILTMORE TOWERForgotten New York
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