Built To Last:
100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York
Stanley Turkel
The thirty-two century-old hotels featured in "Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels in
New York", have defied the passage of time for a variety of reasons, many explicable, some
beyond explanation, all miraculous. For eighteen of them, it was the fortuitous creation of New
York City Landmark Preservation Commission in 1965. The landmarks law was enacted in
response to the demolition of the iconic Pennsylvania Station in 1963.
The main criteria for inclusion of the thirty-two hotels is that their structures are at
least one hundred years old:
• Twenty of them began their existence as hotels and still operate as hotels
• Two began as university clubs with hotel rooms and still operate as clubs
• Six began as hotels and are now apartment buildings
• Two began as private clubs and are now hotels
• One began as a hotel and now operates as a subsidized housing facility
• One started as a hotel, was converted into an office building and is now
becoming a hotel
again.
After 139 years, the following evaluation is still true:
"New York is the paradise of hotels. In no other city do they flourish in
such numbers, and nowhere else do they attain such a degree of
excellence. The hotels of New York naturally take the lead of all others
in America, and are regarded by all who have visited them as models of
their kind."
James D. McCabe, Jr.
Lights and Shadows of New York, 1872