Vanderbilt Hotel

66 East 34th Street | also 4 Park Avenue, 53 East 33rd Street | Midtown South | built 1913

Open on the map8 entries

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. 1912

    January

    A fire three days after opening tests the Vanderbilt Hotel's fireproof construction

    Three days after the hotel opened on January 10, 1912, crates of excelsior stacked in a room caught fire. The blaze burned intensely, but The Sun reported that it did practically no damage. The Board of Fire Underwriters credited the architects' and engineers' planning with keeping the fire to a relatively small space.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1912

    May

    About 150 waiters, cooks and busboys strike the new Vanderbilt Hotel

    In May 1912, four months after the hotel opened, some 150 of its waiters, cooks and busboys walked out. Their demands included one day off each week, a ten-hour day, minimum pay of $10 a week for steady waiters and $7 for busboys, and wholesome food with a daily change of menu.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1915

    May 1

    Hotel owner Alfred Vanderbilt sails on the Lusitania and does not return

    Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, who had the hotel's top two floors outfitted as a private home for his family, left for London in May 1915 with only his valet. That morning's newspapers carried a black-framed German embassy warning to Atlantic travelers, which the couple reportedly laughed off. He boarded the Lusitania, and after it was torpedoed an eyewitness reported that he gave his life jacket to a mother holding an infant. His body was never found.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1920

    Tenor Enrico Caruso takes over the Vanderbilt family suite

    In August 1920 the New York Times noted that Enrico Caruso had taken the apartment at the Vanderbilt that was built for the late Alfred Vanderbilt. The tenor filled it with art and mementos of his career. In spring 1921, in declining health, he left for Italy after having his secretary crate everything up. He died in Naples on August 21, 1921, and his son spent the day of the funeral in the suite.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1922

    A skywritten 'Hello USA' over Times Square draws 47,000 calls to the hotel

    In 1922 Royal Air Force captain Cyril Turner wrote 'Hello USA' in smoke over Times Square, then added 'Call Vanderbilt 7200,' which was the hotel's telephone number. It was the first skywriting advertisement in the United States. The hotel took 47,000 phone calls in the three hours that followed.

    “The hotel received 47,000 phone calls in the three hours following the stunt.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  6. 1931

    Humorist Ring Lardner moves into the hotel after a storm wrecks his house

    After a storm badly damaged his East Hampton house in 1931, Ring Lardner and his wife, Ellis Abbott, took up residence at the Vanderbilt. In a letter he began on February 13, he wrote that his health had not been good and that he guessed he was paying for his past. He had tuberculosis and a heart ailment, and he died in 1933.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  7. 1966

    June

    Workers jackhammer eighteen terra-cotta heads off the hotel's roof

    When the hotel was converted into offices and apartments, penthouses were planned for the roof, and the terra-cotta parapet's sculptures were removed to make way for them. In June 1966 a ten-man crew from the Drachman Demolition Company used jackhammers to cut off eighteen of the heads over several days, according to the New York Times. The removals left a gash in the roofline.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  8. 1966

    Conversion crews find a bricked-up room of women's clothes and shoes

    A group led by John Marqusee bought the closed hotel in April 1966 for $3.625 million and began converting the top 18 floors to apartments. During the work, crews found a room that had been sealed with brick and appeared in no blueprint, holding women's clothes and shoes. Even after the conversion was completed in 1967, people sometimes came by expecting the hotel and its restaurants to still be running.

    “…workers also discovered a room with women's clothes and shoes, which had been sealed off with brick and was not in the building's blueprints…”

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 20 buildings with stories in Midtown South