The Peninsula New York
The Peninsula New York is a luxury hotel at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Built in 1905 as the Gotham Hotel, the structure was designed by Hiss and Weekes in the neoclassical style. The hotel is part of the Peninsula Hotels group, which is owned by Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels. The structure is 23 stories high and, as of 2022, contains 241 rooms.
The facade, made of limestone and granite, was intended to complement the neighboring University Club of New York building. It is divided horizontally into a base, shaft, and capital. A three-story glass penthouse, completed in the 1980s to designs by Stephen B. Jacobs, rises above the original roof and contains the hotel's pool and fitness center. The lower stories contain two restaurants, a lobby, and various other rooms across multiple levels. The hotel originally had 400 guestrooms, although this was downsized in the 1980s to 250 rooms, including a multi-room presidential suite near the roof.
The 55th Street Company acquired the site in April 1902 and developed the Gotham Hotel, which opened on October 1, 1905. The hotel was sold in 1908 after several failed attempts to procure a liquor license, and it was resold several times over the next three decades. The Gotham was acquired in 1932 by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which added ground-level storefronts in 1938 and continued to own the hotel until 1944. The Gotham was resold several more times in the 1950s and 1960s before Sol Goldman and Alex DiLorenzo acquired it in 1965. Rene Hatt leased the Gotham in 1979 and attempted to renovate it into the Hotel Nova-Park Gotham, but he gave up his lease in 1984 following several lawsuits and financial issues. A joint venture of several companies completed the renovation and reopened the hotel in November 1987 as the Hotel Maxim's de Paris, an outpost of Parisian restaurant Maxim's. HSH acquired the hotel's lease in 1989, renaming it the Peninsula New York, and renovated the hotel again in 1998.
Site
The Peninsula New York is in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue to the east and 55th Street to the north. The land lot is rectangular and covers, with a frontage of on Fifth Avenue and a depth of along 55th Street. To the west and south, the hotel is surrounded by the clubhouse of the University Club of New York. The site shares the block with 5, 7, 9–11, 13 and 15 West 54th Street; 46 West 55th Street; and the Rockefeller Apartments to the west. The hotel is also near the Museum of Modern Art to the south; Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church and 712 Fifth Avenue to the north; 550 Madison Avenue to the northeast; the St. Regis New York hotel to the east; and 689 Fifth Avenue to the southeast.Architecture
The hotel was built in 1905 as the Gotham Hotel and was designed by Hiss and Weekes in the Italian Renaissance Revival style. The hotel building is shaped like a "C" and is arranged around a light court that faces the University Club building to the south.Facade
The facade was made of limestone and granite to complement the neighboring University Club building. The facade is divided vertically into five bays on Fifth Avenue and six bays on 55th Street. Similar to other Beaux-Arts buildings, the facade is divided into three horizontal sections similar to the components of a column, namely a base, shaft, and capital. Despite its sturdy-looking appearance, the facade is actually a curtain wall hung from the building's steel superstructure. Originally, the hotel was 19 stories high and rose above the sidewalk. After a renovation in the 1980s, the hotel had 23 stories.Base
The base of the hotel is three stories high; the first two stories were originally one double-height level. Along the base is a series of triple-height piers made of rusticated blocks, which in turn form an arcade that wraps around both Fifth Avenue and 55th Street. On Fifth Avenue and the easternmost part of the 55th Street elevation, the first story contains flat-arched openings, while the second story contains round arches. There was originally a balustrade facing Fifth Avenue, which was removed after 1908 when the avenue was widened. There are shields with festoons above the second-story windows. The third story contains rectangular windows that are recessed from the facade and contain carved soffits. The entablature above the third story was intended to be a continuation of the cornice above the University Club's first tier.The hotel's main entrance is at the center of the 55th Street elevation and is placed within a rectangular opening. Above the doorway is a segmentally-arched broken pediment, which contains swags and a pair of sculptures on either side of a circular window. The sculptures depict the ancient goddesses Ceres and Diana. The doorway is flanked by large engaged columns in the Ionic order, placed atop pedestals. The columns are ornamented with vertical fluting and horizontal bands, and they support an entablature at the third floor. There are three bays of windows on either side of the 55th Street entrance. The two easternmost bays contain storefronts, while the other four bays contain double-height openings.
Upper stories
Above the base, the hotel building's windows are all rectangular. The 4th to 6th stories are clad with rusticated blocks and are treated as a transitional story. There are small pilasters above each of the 4th-story windows, which carry an entablature above the 4th story. In addition, the 5th-story windows are surrounded by large frames and topped by either segmentally-arched or triangular pediments. The 6th-story windows generally have simple frames, except in the outermost bays, which have elaborate surrounds. There is a cornice above the 6th story, which is designed as a continuation of the cornice above the University Club's second tier.On the 7th through 16th stories, only the outermost bays are rusticated, while the center bays contain a facade of smooth ashlar. The outermost sections of the Fifth Avenue and 55th Street elevations contain two windows per story on each corner. On both elevations, there are heavy scrolled brackets in front of the three center bays, which support a balcony. The balconies originally had iron balustrades and were intended to correspond with the University Club's cornice. Above the 15th story is a cornice with garlands, above which rises the capital. There are brackets and corbels at the 16th story, above which is a double-height arcade on the 17th and 18th stories. The arcade contains circular windows with wreaths, as well as shields with garlands; its design was meant to visually complement the arcade at the base. The entablature at the hotel's roof is made of copper.
The western and southern elevations are plain in design, with rectangular windows on a limestone-colored facade. The facade of the western elevation is rusticated above the 15th story, and the southwestern corner of the building contains a light court. The southern elevation contains a large light court at its center; at the 15th and 17th stories, horizontal braces cut across the light court. There is a copper entablature at the top of the southern elevation. A three-story glass penthouse, completed in the 1980s to designs by Stephen B. Jacobs, rises above the original roof. The penthouse, which consists of an angled framework, is not easily visible from street level.
Interior
The hotel was built with four elevators, which were clustered at the center of the building. There were also three staircases: one near the elevators, and an enclosed fire escape at the end of either wing. One of the fire escapes was intended for servants' use. Above the ground floor, the hotel was designed as a fireproof structure; the door frames and window frames were made of asbestos, and the doors themselves were made of wire glass. The hotel building also had fire alarms, which were relatively novel features when the Gotham opened in the 1900s. The Gotham also contained dumbwaiters, a pneumatic tube system, and a system of pipes for vacuum cleaning.Basements and first story
The hotel had two basement levels. One of these basements contained the hotel's kitchen and commissary department, directly beneath the dining room. The basements contained a laundry room, a refrigeration plant, and a garbage-disposal machine. The garbage disposal was directly beneath the hotel's kitchen. Also in the basement was a bar, which was not open to the public at the time of the hotel's opening in 1905. This bar had a coffered ceiling and was designed in a Renaissance style. At the time of the hotel's opening, New York state law restricted bars that operated within of a church's entrance; this law was technically still in effect at the end of the 1990s, but a looser interpretation of the law allowed a bar to operate within the modern-day hotel. Access to the Peninsula New York's cocktail lounge involves traversing a flight of stairs and a narrow hallway, so the walking distance from the cocktail lounge to the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church was more than 200 feet.The ground-floor public rooms were double-height spaces. The Gotham Hotel was not built with a public lobby. Instead, two revolving doors on 55th Street led to the foyer, a square space with Caen stone walls and columns, a brown-and-gold ceiling, and a bronze chandelier. To the right of the foyer was the hotel's office and the writing room, while to the left was an iron-and-glass partition that separated the foyer from the original dining room. The writing room was decorated in red, gold, and green and led to a telephone and telegraph room, as well as a stairway leading to a bar in the basement. Next to the writing room was a hallway, which had its own entrance on 55th Street and led to the original ballroom on the second floor. A square palm room connected the writing room with a dining room. The palm room had marble columns with Corinthian capitals; a leaded-glass skylight with green panels; and a bronze chandelier.
The dining room measured across, with a ceiling measuring high, and had seats for 400 people. Modeled after the Doge's Palace in Venice, it was decorated in green and red, with walnut wainscoting, as well as columns supporting a coffered ceiling. The dining room also had French doors leading to an outdoor terrace facing Fifth Avenue. The original furniture was designed in the Georgian style. Most of the original dining room was demolished in May 1938, when five storefronts were constructed along Fifth Avenue; the original office was converted to a new dining room at that time.