St. Regis New York
The St. Regis New York is a luxury hotel at 2 East 55th Street, at the southeast corner with Fifth Avenue, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The hotel was originally developed by John Jacob Astor IV and was completed in 1904 to designs by Trowbridge & Livingston. An annex to the east was designed by Sloan & Robertson and completed in 1927. The hotel is operated by Marriott International and holds Forbes five-star and AAA five-diamond ratings. In addition, it is a New York City designated landmark.
The 18-story hotel was designed in the Beaux-Arts style. The facade of the original hotel is made of limestone and is divided into three horizontal sections similar to the components of a column, namely a base, shaft, and capital. The St. Regis required a large amount of mechanical equipment, which was placed on three basement levels. When the St. Regis opened, the interior was extensively decorated in marble and bronze. The first floor contained a restaurant, café, palm court, and hotel office, while the second floor contained a banquet hall, ballroom, and private dining room.
Astor began constructing the hotel in 1901 and named it after Upper St. Regis Lake in the Adirondack Mountains. The hotel opened on September 4, 1904, and quickly became known as an upscale hostelry. Rudolph Haan operated the hotel from its opening until 1926. Astor's son Vincent Astor sold the St. Regis in 1927 to Benjamin Newton Duke, who developed the annex. After an acrimonious dispute in 1934, Vincent Astor re-acquired the hotel the next year and continued to own it until his death in 1959. The hotel was sold several times in the early 1960s, and Cesar Balsa operated the hotel briefly before the St. Regis joined the Sheraton Hotels and Resorts chain in 1966. The St. Regis has been renovated several times over the years, and it became part of the Marriott chain in 2016. The Qatar Investment Authority bought the hotel building in 2019.
Site
The St. Regis New York is at 2 East 55th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is on the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue to the west and 55th Street to the north. The land lot is L-shaped and covers, with a frontage of on 55th Street and a depth of. Nearby sites include the University Club of New York to the southwest; The Peninsula New York hotel to the west; the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church and 712 Fifth Avenue to the northwest; the 550 Madison Avenue to the northeast; 19 East 54th Street to the east; and 689 Fifth Avenue and the William H. Moore House to the south.When the St. Regis was announced in 1900, the L-shaped site measured wide on 55th Street to the north and wide on Fifth Avenue to the west. The eastern end of the site measured deep. The L-shaped site spanned, though the developers obtained an additional by acquiring another site on 55th Street. Before the St. Regis Hotel was developed, there had been proposals to develop a clubhouse for the New York Republican Club on the site. The plot was expanded to in early 1927, with a frontage of 100 feet on Fifth Avenue and 250 feet on 55th Street.
History
Background
between 42nd Street and Central Park South was relatively undeveloped through the late 19th century, and many row houses were developed on the avenue. By the early 1900s, that section of Fifth Avenue was becoming a commercial area. Lily Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, owned the site at the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street until 1891, when she sold it to William Backhouse Astor Jr. for $55,000. After William Astor's death, the site passed first to his widow Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, then to their son John Jacob Astor IV.John Jacob Astor IV was a co-owner of the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street; his great-grandfather John Jacob Astor had built one of the first modern hotels in the world, the Astor House in Lower Manhattan, in 1836. Although Astor had considered building a residence at Fifth Avenue and 55th Street in 1896, he ultimately decided to develop against it because of the area's increasingly commercial character. Astor announced plans for a three-story commercial structure on the site in 1899 but then changed his plans to those for a hotel. At his niece's suggestion, Astor named the new hotel after Upper St. Regis Lake in the Adirondacks, which in turn was named for French Jesuit priest Jean-François Régis.
Construction
At the end of December 1900, Astor leased the proposed Hotel St. Regis to hotelier Rudolph Haan for 20 years, with options for three 20-year extensions. New York City police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt had introduced Haan to the Astor family shortly before the hotel's development. The structure was budgeted at $1.25 million, excluding the $600,000 cost of the land. Excavation of the site began immediately after Haan leased the hotel. Trowbridge & Livingston had completed their designs for the project in early 1901. The original plans were similar to the final design, except that the roof had multiple chimneys. Astor acquired a row house at 6 East 55th Street, just east of the new hotel, in February 1901. Astor also acquired an option on the residence of Sarah Fox at 3 East 54th Street, next to William Rockefeller Jr.'s residence. By early 1902, the hotel's stonework was almost completed, and contractors were applying interior finishes. Haan acquired a second house at 8 East 55th Street in February 1902, which he planned to use for an annex to the hotel.Controversies and delays
The hotel was next to numerous wealthy New Yorkers' homes and, as such, was controversial from the start. Even as other commercial developments were being built along the midtown section of Fifth Avenue, concerned locals bought up nearby houses to prevent the construction of similar hotels in the area. Rockefeller, who opposed the project, bought Fox's house to prevent Astor from expanding the hotel to 54th Street. Several nearby properties were also damaged during the hotel's construction. For instance, city officials found in late 1901 that the excavations had ruptured a sewage pipe and flooded nearby houses, and a construction accident in early 1902 caused a marble block to smash through the roof of a neighboring house. One neighbor sued the construction contractor, the Thompson–Starrett Company, after his house was repeatedly damaged by debris, construction materials, and leaks. Construction was temporarily halted in May 1902 after the Bureau of Buildings discovered that the hotel's yellow-pine wood decorations were not sufficiently fireproofed. The contractors agreed to replace the yellow pine with another wood, and work resumed shortly afterward. Haan traveled for two years to procure furniture and furnishings from Europe.Midway during construction, Astor decided to lease only part of the hotel to families, rather than the entire hotel as originally planned. In addition, plans for the hotel were revised to include an annex at 6 and 8 East 55th Street. Construction of the annex began in February 1903, but work was temporarily delayed by a labor strike in June 1903. Astor also acquired a site at 10 East 55th Street from local residents who had bought it in an attempt to block a further annex to the hotel. A covenant required the site to be used as a private residence for 15 years, and Astor planned to erect a house for Haan on the site. The sites at 6–10 East 55th Street were excavated simultaneously to save money, and workers built three basements on the site of Haan's house. Several residents filed a lawsuit to halt the excavations, contending that the basements were being excavated for the hotel because no private residence would need such deep basements. A New York Supreme Court judge ruled against them in November 1903, saying that the covenant did not prevent multiple basements at 10 East 55th Street.
Astor and Haan wanted to obtain a liquor license to offset the high construction costs, to the annoyance of local residents who already opposed the hotel's construction. At the time, New York state law required that any establishment with a liquor license was required to gain the approval of the owners of two-thirds of all private property within, and was required to be at least 200 feet from any church. The Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, which objected to the liquor license, was diagonally across from the hotel. A significant number of local residents also objected to the liquor license. In early 1904, the New York State Legislature passed a bill that only required any churches within a 200-foot radius to consent to the license. The sponsors of this legislation did not attempt to hide the fact that the law targeted the St. Regis, and they knew the church would never provide such consent. Accordingly, Haan bought the house at 697 Fifth Avenue in June 1904, and he relocated the hotel's main entrance from Fifth Avenue to 55th Street, which was more than 200 feet away from the church. Haan obtained a liquor license the next month, and the church dropped its formal opposition to the license.
Opening and early years
The Hotel St. Regis opened on September 4, 1904, almost simultaneously with the completion of the Hotel Astor, operated by John Jacob Astor's cousin and rival, William Waldorf Astor. Thousands of people had sought invitations to the hotel's opening-night dinner. Haan said the new hotel would serve guests on a "first come, first served" basis. The hotel had cost $5.5 million to develop; the building itself had cost $4 million, while the furnishings had cost another $1.5 million.John Jacob Astor ownership
In the months after the St. Regis opened, there was much coverage of its costs and expenses; for instance, one of the beds cost $10,000 and a turkey cost $4.50. Daily room rates ranged from $4 for the smallest suites to $125 for the state apartment. Haan disavowed claims that the hotel was expensive, saying: "We charge $14 a day for salon, bedchamber, and bath." Media reports still exaggerated the hotel's high prices. According to Town and Country magazine, the public was given the impression that guests had to spend "two or three figures" on food and "a small fortune" on the rooms. Another rumor circulated that the chambermaids' keys were attached to strings of pearls around their waists. These reports scared away all except the wealthiest guests. Haan described media coverage of the hotel as a "positive injury" to business, saying that the reports were "frightening away millionaires". Nonetheless, the St. Regis was still a luxury hotel; access to the public rooms and the guestrooms was restricted to those who could pay.William Rockefeller bought an adjacent mansion at 7 East 54th Street in October 1904. This purchase may have been intended to prevent a southward expansion of the St. Regis or to get the hotel's liquor license revoked. Early the next year, several of the hotel's opponents filed a lawsuit to request revocation of the St. Regis's liquor license; they claimed that, in his license application, Haan had provided false statements about the number of local residents who consented to the license. A state judge rejected the suit in April 1905, saying that the plaintiffs had to file a lawsuit individually. Opponents then requested that a state judge enjoin Astor from developing an annex to the hotel at 10 East 55th Street. A further amendment to the liquor law, exempting all hotels with over 200 rooms from having to obtain permission from nearby churches, failed in 1905 and again in 1907. An outdoor restaurant opened at the St. Regis in 1906. The outdoor restaurant, placed along a terrace facing Fifth Avenue, quickly became popular during dinners.
According to one critic, the hotel was specifically intended for those "who were rich, and who were or wanted to be fashionable, but which would also be somewhat quieter and more exclusive". The hotel was relatively close to many theaters and stores, but the immediate vicinity was still largely composed of private residences. Despite recurring reports about the hotel's exorbitant prices, the St. Regis's rates were no higher than those of similar upscale hotels in New York City. Many of the hotel's first patrons were upper-class but not ultra-wealthy. Town and Country reported in 1907 that many rooms were being rented at nightly rates of $5 to $10, while the more expensive suites rented for $14 to $20. By then, the hotel had become a popular venue for wealthy New Yorkers' dinner-dances, which had previously been hosted at the Delmonico's or Sherry's restaurants. In keeping with the St. Regis's upscale character, the hotel's operators trained the staff extensively and branded it as "The Best in America". According to the 1910 United States census, many of the hotel's permanent residents were families who had relocated from townhouses in Midtown and lived with one or two servants. The St. Regis's terrace restaurant was demolished after Fifth Avenue was widened in 1911, since the terrace protruded into the street.