The Stanhope
995 5th Avenue | also 2 East 81st Street | Upper East Side | built 1926
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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.
- 1926
The new Stanhope Hotel mixes Georgian, Adam and Jacobean rooms under a carved lion crest
American Heritage later described the Stanhope as having begun life in 1926 with a muddled Anglophile style, with a carved rampant-lion crest above the entrance. A journal of the time praised a Georgian lobby, an Adam reception room and a Jacobean private dining room. The main dining room instead drew on a French style.
Source: americanheritage.com
- 1951
Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter takes a suite and hosts jazz players
After separating from her husband in 1951, Pannonica de Koenigswarter moved to New York and rented a suite at the Stanhope. She hosted jam sessions there for jazz musicians and often drove them to gigs in her Bentley.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1955
Charlie Parker dies in the Baroness's Stanhope suite and she is asked to leave
Charlie Parker died in Pannonica de Koenigswarter's rooms at the Stanhope in 1955. Afterward the hotel management asked her to leave, and she relocated to the Bolivar Hotel at 230 Central Park West.
“Following Parker's death in her Stanhope rooms in 1955…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1980
New owners rename the hotel the American Stanhope and fill it with nineteenth-century American pieces
In 1980 new owners renamed it the American Stanhope and gave its decor an American theme. Designers Mimi Russell and Arnold Copper scoured auction houses and galleries across the country for authentic nineteenth-century American paintings and furniture for the public and private rooms. American Heritage reported in 1982 that the 276 guest rooms were being systematically repainted and papered.
Source: americanheritage.com
- 1988
The hotel's owner files for bankruptcy after a $26 million Louis XV-style renovation
Gerald Guterman's Hanover Companies bought the Stanhope for $19 million in 1986 and spent $26 million on a Louis XV-style renovation, planning to sell the 132 rooms and suites as co-ops. The reopened hotel was among the first in the city to charge more than $200 a night, but profits fell short. The Hanover subsidiary filed for Chapter 11 in February 1988, and Tobishima Associates bought the hotel at a November auction for $76 million.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2005
The Stanhope closes as a hotel and becomes a co-op
Hyatt Hotels bought the Stanhope in 1999 for $65 million and revived its cabaret as the Melrose Room, with pianist Steve Ross and soprano Anna Bergman among the performers. It also paid $2 million a year to Sol Goldman's estate, which owned the leased land under the building. The building stopped operating as a hotel on January 13, 2005 and was converted to a 26-unit co-op that year.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- 995 Fifth AvenueWikipedia
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