Hotel Elysée

60 East 54th Street | also 60A East 54th Street, 56 East 54th Street | Midtown | built 1926

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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. 1926

    Max Haering opens the Hotel Elysée for the "carriage trade"

    Swiss-born Max Haering founded the Hotel Elysée in 1926, on East 54th Street between Madison and Park Avenues, at number 60. He aimed it at the "carriage trade" as a European-style hotel. Today it belongs to Henry Kallan's Library Hotel Collection.

    Source: Wikipedia

  2. 1937

    Hatcheck magnate Mayer Quain buys the bankrupt hotel

    Mayer Quain, New York's leading hatcheck concessionaire, bought the Hotel Elysée in 1937, out of bankruptcy. His children, after World War II, designed each room differently and gave them personality-based names in place of numbers. One example was the "Sayonara" suite, assigned to Marlon Brando after Teahouse of the August Moon.

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 1948

    November

    Tallulah Bankhead throws a five-day party celebrating Truman's win

    Tallulah Bankhead marked Harry Truman's victory over Thomas Dewey in the 1948 presidential election with a noisy party at the Hotel Elysée. It ran nonstop for five days and nights. The hotel had been under Mayer Quain's ownership since 1937.

    Source: Wikipedia

  4. 1983

    Jimmy Breslin recalls hotel staff moving a guest away from Tennessee Williams's all-night typing

    After Tennessee Williams died at the Elysée in February 1983, columnist Jimmy Breslin retold a story from the front desk. A guest had phoned at 5 a.m. to complain that someone in the next suite typed all night. Staff knew at once who it was, but nobody was going to tell the playwright to stop writing, so the complaining guest was shifted to another room.

    Source: Wikipedia

  5. 1983

    February

    Playwright Tennessee Williams dies at the hotel

    Tennessee Williams died at the Hotel Elysée in February 1983. Columnist Jimmy Breslin, the hotel's unofficial chronicler, recalled that staff once moved a guest who complained about overnight typing in the next suite, since they could hardly ask Williams to stop writing.

    Source: Wikipedia

  6. 1990

    Pianist Johnny Andrews ends a run of more than 50 years at the Monkey Bar

    Johnny Andrews played the piano at cocktail hour in the Elysée's Monkey Bar from 1936 until 1990. Regulars knew the tiny room as the place to go where jokes die, with off-color jokes and double-entendre songs from performers such as Johnny Payne, Marion Page and Mel Martin.

    “Johnny Andrews played the piano at cocktail hour for over 50 years (1936-1990).”

    Source: Wikipedia

  7. 1995

    David Rockwell redesigns the Monkey Bar

    Architect David Rockwell redesigned the Elysée's Monkey Bar, the piano bar off the lobby that opened in the 1940s and became known for off-color jokes. Artist Diana Voyentzie unified the monkeys on Charlie Vella's hand-painted mural, adding more monkeys along with palm trees and foliage.

    Source: Wikipedia

  8. 2009

    Graydon Carter and Jeff Klein buy the Monkey Bar and add an Ed Sorel mural of Jazz Age icons

    In 2009 Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and hotelier Jeff Klein bought the Monkey Bar and had it fully restored. They commissioned the illustrator Ed Sorel to paint a wraparound mural for the Art Deco dining room, which depicts sixty Jazz Age figures, among them Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Dorothy Parker and Langston Hughes.

    Source: savingplaces.org

  9. 2011

    A 'refreshening' brings Ken Friedman to the Monkey Bar and opens its reservations to more diners

    After the Monkey Bar reopened in 2009, its guest list largely catered to Graydon Carter's network of friends and professional contacts. A 2011 refresh added restaurateur Ken Friedman as a managing partner, along with a new chef and general manager. The National Trust for Historic Preservation says booking a table became much more democratic afterward.

    Source: savingplaces.org

Further reading

Nearby

All 178 buildings with stories in Midtown