Concourse Plaza Hotel
900 Grand Conc | also 900 Grand Concourse | Concourse Village | built 1923
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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.
- 1923
The Concourse Plaza Hotel opens, with Governor Al Smith speaking, in the year Yankee Stadium opens
A group called the Bronx Boosters, led by J.M. Haffen, built this 11-story hotel to plans by Maynicke & Franke, filed in 1922 and completed in 1923, the same year Yankee Stadium opened a few blocks west. New York Governor Alfred E. Smith spoke at the opening. Meant to match Manhattan's finest hotels, it drew guests that included the Yankee stars Babe Ruth, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.
- 1924
Democratic presidential candidates begin campaigning at a ladies' luncheon at the hotel
From 1924, Democratic nominees for president made a habit of appearing at a ladies' luncheon held at the Concourse Plaza on the Saturday before Election Day. Among those said to have done so here were Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. For decades the hotel's banquet rooms were also in demand for weddings, bar mitzvahs and political events.
- 1934
Luncheons at the hotel help celebrate the opening of the Bronx County Courthouse across the street
The Bronx County Courthouse opened in 1934 after a three-day dedication that also marked the Bronx's 20th year as a county. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia moved the seat of city government from City Hall to the courthouse for the three days, and the festivities included speeches, a military parade, a band concert and luncheons at the Concourse Plaza Hotel across the street.
“…further included speeches, a military parade and band concert, as well as luncheons at the Concourse Plaza Hotel located across the street…”
- 1975
New York City buys the faded hotel, by then a welfare hotel, to turn it into housing for the elderly
After the syndicate running the hotel was charged with fraud in the mid-1950s, the Concourse Plaza became a welfare hotel by the 1960s, with permanent and temporary residents placed there under the city's emergency relocation program. Its ballrooms hosted bingo, dances and, in the early 1970s, a disputed discotheque called the Tunnel. The city bought the building in 1975 to convert it for older residents, though worsening finances in the late 1970s held up the work.
- 1982
The former Concourse Plaza Hotel reopens as a federally subsidized home for senior citizens
In 1982 the old hotel reopened as a senior citizens residence backed by federal subsidies, a use it still had when the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the district. For the conversion the ballroom at the center of the front was gutted and its roof taken off, leaving an open-air courtyard for the new residents behind the surviving outer wall.
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