The Sherry-Netherland
781 5th Avenue | Upper East Side | built 1927
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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.
- 1893
The Hotel Netherland, designed by W. H. Hume & Son, stands on the corner until its demolition in 1926
The Landmarks Preservation Commission's Upper East Side Historic District report says the Sherry-Netherland stands on the site of an earlier Hotel Netherland, built 1890-93 to designs by W. H. Hume & Son and demolished in 1926. Its replacement, designed by Schultze & Weaver with Buchman & Kahn, went up in 1926-27. The block between 59th and 60th Streets held only two buildings: this hotel and the apartment building at 785 Fifth Avenue.
- 1893
The Hotel New Netherland opens with a button press, a flag and a rooftop cannon
The 17-story Hotel New Netherland, which stood on this corner before the Sherry-Netherland, held a showy opening in 1893. The night before, lessee Ferdinand Earle gave three US senators, Hill, Faulkner and Dubois, the run of the empty hotel as a publicity stunt. On opening day his young son pressed a button meant to start the power plant, raise a flag atop the roof and fire a cannon, after which the house was declared open.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1893
A cardinal officiates at a society wedding, and 125 guests breakfast at the New Netherland
Elizabeth Elkins, daughter of Stephen Benton Elkins, married Edwin E. Bruner at St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1893, with Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore officiating and Archbishop Corrigan taking part. The bridal party had taken rooms at the Hotel New Netherland, which stood on this corner. Afterward a standing wedding breakfast for 125 guests was held in the hotel's parlor-floor banquet hall, followed by a reception, and the couple planned to live at the hotel.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1894
Detectives break up a ring of employees carrying off the New Netherland's silver and bric-a-brac
In September 1894 the manager of the Hotel New Netherland noticed that vases, silver and china were vanishing, and a house detective traced thousands of dollars in missing goods within a month. Staff had tossed the loot into ash carts and later pawned it. In November police arrested watchman Allen Curry, William Shannon, John Rooney and Shannon's wife Mary on charges of stealing about $5,000 in goods, much of it recovered from their homes.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1897
Florenz Ziegfeld and Anna Held declare themselves married in her hotel suite
French-Polish singer Anna Held checked into the Hotel New Netherland in 1894 under contract to Florenz Ziegfeld, and made news by ordering 40 gallons of milk a day for her baths. In the spring of 1897 the pair signed a document in her suite there, proclaiming themselves married with no clergy or official present. Diamond Jim Brady and Lillian Russell witnessed it, and the couple lived as husband and wife for nearly sixteen years.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1927
Wooden scaffolding on the unfinished tower catches fire, sparking a press debate on fighting high-rise blazes
On April 12, 1927, before the hotel was complete, the wooden scaffolding around its upper floors burned in a spectacular fire. The blaze was said to be visible from Long Island, and it set off a debate in the press over whether the technology of the day could put out fires in tall buildings.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1927
Louis Sherry, Inc., run by Waldorf-Astoria hotelier Lucius Boomer, takes over the nearly finished hotel
In March 1927, with construction nearly done, ownership passed to Louis Sherry, Inc., a Boomer-duPont Properties subsidiary. Lucius Boomer was an experienced hotel operator also tied to the Waldorf-Astoria, while Louis Sherry, a well-known restaurateur famous for ice cream and confections, had died before his name was attached to the project. Because of Prohibition, the hotel was planned with less public restaurant space than other prewar hotels.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1927
The 38-story hotel rises in neo-Romanesque and neo-Gothic style, reusing reliefs from the Vanderbilt mansion
The Upper East Side Historic District report lists the Sherry-Netherland as a 38-story hotel of stone and brick, erected in 1926-27 by Schultze & Weaver with Buchman & Kahn, in neo-Romanesque and neo-Gothic style. The report also records one of the few sidewalk clocks left, and says Karl Bitter's reliefs, taken from the Cornelius Vanderbilt II House, were reused on the entrance facade.
“…reliefs from the Cornelius Vanderbilt II House, sculpted by Karl Bitt…”
- 1940
Stock speculator Jesse Livermore shoots himself in the hotel's cloakroom on Thanksgiving Day
Shortly after 5:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1940, the famed Wall Street trader Jesse Livermore shot himself with a Colt automatic in the Sherry-Netherland's cloakroom, a spot where he habitually had cocktails. A suicide note of eight small handwritten pages lay in his leather-bound notebook, addressed to his wife, Harriet, whom he called Nina. In it he wrote that things had gone badly, that he was tired of fighting and that he was a failure.
“Livermore fatally shot himself with a Colt automatic pistol in the cloakroom of the Sherry-Netherland hotel in Manhattan, where he usually had cocktails.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1954
The Sherry-Netherland becomes a co-op in 1954, five years after Atlas Corporation buys the hotel
The hotel was sold in 1949 to Floyd Odlum and Boyd Hatch's Atlas Corporation. In 1954 its 165 apartments were converted to co-ops. The building today also keeps 50 hotel rooms and suites, and above the 24th floor the tower holds a single apartment on each floor. Its roofline, in a neo-Romanesque and neo-Gothic mix with gargoyles, hides a water tower.
“The building houses 165 apartments that were converted to co-ops in 1954.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2014
The lobby ceiling's Raphael-inspired frescoes are restored
In 2014 Evergreene Architectural Arts restored the lobby ceiling of the Sherry-Netherland. Its frescoes draw on Raphael's work in Cardinal Bibbiena's Loggetta at the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City. Artist Joseph Aruta recreated that style for the hotel in the 1920s.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2014
The lobby's painted ceiling is restored to its 1920s look
In 2014 the hotel restored the mural on its lobby ceiling, returning it to the appearance it had in the 1920s. The artist Joseph Aruta designed the original, basing its intricate decoration on Raphael's frescoes in Cardinal Bibbiena's Loggetta in the Vatican Palace.
Source: sherrynetherland.com
Further reading
- The Sherry-NetherlandWikipedia
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