Hotel McAlpin (Herald Towers)

50 West 34th Street | also 60 West 34th Street, 1282 Broadway, 1284 Broadway | Midtown South | built 1912

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

  1. 1912

    December 30

    The Hotel McAlpin opens as what was reportedly the world's largest hotel

    The hotel opened on December 30, 1912, just ahead of New Year's Eve, at a cost of $13.5 million. Frank Mills Andrews, who designed it and led the company that ran it, built a 25-story hotel that was reportedly the largest in the world. A staff of 1,500 served up to 2,500 guests, and the land belonged to the McAlpin Estate, which gave the hotel its name.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1912

    The McAlpin reserves floors for single women, men only, and daytime sleepers

    Andrews designed the hotel with specialized floors. One was kept for women traveling alone, with its own women-staffed check-in desk, so they need not cross the main lobby. Another was for men only, with a clubroom and bar, and the 16th floor, the Sleepy Sixteenth, was held quiet for guests who slept by day. A small hospital occupied the 23rd floor.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1912

    The McAlpin's basement Rathskeller opens, walled and vaulted in colored terra cotta

    Below ground, the hotel's Rathskeller was a vaulted room of polychrome terra cotta in a Spanish Renaissance style, said to be about twice the floor area of any similar room in the city. The Atlantic Terra Cotta Company blended glazes in a new way. Terra-cotta murals by Frederick Dana Marsh showing the city's maritime history led to the room being renamed the Maritime Grill, later called the Marine Grill.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1925

    A glass-walled radio studio at the McAlpin gives birth to station WMCA

    After linking ship-to-shore radio into its phone system in 1922, the McAlpin installed a circular, glass-enclosed radio studio three years later. The station that began there was WMCA, and the hotel's own orchestra played on it. Management promised that only professional entertainers would use the microphone, not amateurs.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1952

    Joseph Levy persuades Larry and Bob Tisch to lease the McAlpin

    In 1952 the hotel's owner, Joseph Levy of Jamlee Hotels, met the brothers Larry and Bob Tisch at a cocktail party and talked them into leasing it. The Tisches put about $1 million into modernizing it, and occupancy rose 20 percent. Within two years Levy sold the hotel to Sheraton for $9 million.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1970

    The McAlpin opens a 299-seat off-Broadway theater on its 24th floor

    In early 1970 the hotel's owners, Sol Goldman and Alexander DiLorenzo, opened the McAlpin Rooftop Theater, an off-Broadway house with 299 seats. They also turned the basement restaurant into the Alpine Cellar for groups and shows. Rooms went for $14 to $26 a night, and the owners hoped to replace the hotel with a 50-story building.

    Source: Wikipedia

  7. 1976

    Zeckendorf buys and closes the McAlpin to convert it to apartments as remaining tenants complain

    William Zeckendorf Jr. and partners bought the hotel in July 1976 for $2.5 million and shut it at once, planning rental apartments. About 30 tenants, many of them elderly, stayed on and charged that the owners cut room service, heat and hot water to push them out. The conversion was described at the time as the largest of its kind in the city's history, and the apartment building opened in July 1980 under the name McAlpin House.

    Source: Wikipedia

  8. 2001

    Six Marine Grill murals from the McAlpin are reassembled at the Fulton Street subway station

    In 1989 the hotel's basement Marine Grill was torn out to make room for a Gap store. Susan Tunick of Friends of Terra Cotta saw dumpsters outside filled with fragments of the room's Frederick Dana Marsh murals. In 2001 six of the murals were pieced back together under the MTA Arts for Transit program and installed at the William Street entrance of the Fulton Street station.

    “In 2001, six of the murals were reassembled under the oversight of the MTA Arts for Transit program at the William Street entrance of the New York City Subway's Fulton Street station.”

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 20 buildings with stories in Midtown South