4 Park Avenue
4 Park Avenue is a 22-story building in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by Warren and Wetmore, the structure was built for Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt and opened in 1912 as a hotel. It is along the west side of Park Avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets. Following a renovation by Schuman, Lichtenstein & Claman between 1965 and 1967, the top 18 stories have been used as residential apartments. The lowest three stories above ground, as well as three basement levels, are used as commercial space and carry an alternate address of 6 Park Avenue., the building is owned by The Feil Organization.
4 Park Avenue's facade was originally made of gray brick and white architectural terracotta. The facade of the lowest four stories dates from the 1960s renovation and is made of glass and steel. Above that, the building retains its original facade and has two light courts facing Park Avenue. The building has a steel superstructure and had mechanical equipment in its basements. The hotel's lobby was designed in the Adam style and is partially preserved as the modern residential lobby. The first basement had a grill room known as the Della Robbia Room, decorated ornately with Guastavino tile; part of the room survives and is designated as a New York City interior landmark. The upper stories had close to 600 rooms, and the top two stories originally contained a private penthouse apartment for A. G. Vanderbilt and his family.
After several years of planning and construction, the Vanderbilt Hotel opened on January 10, 1912, as one of the first large commercial developments in Murray Hill. The Vanderbilt soon became a popular meeting place for companies in the textile and women's apparel industries. A syndicate bought the hotel in 1925, and the New York Life Insurance Company foreclosed on the hotel in 1935. Manger Hotels acquired the hotel in 1941 and continued to operate it until the hotel closed in 1965. A group led by John Marqusee bought the building in 1966 and spent the next year converting the hotel into residences and offices. The building has undergone minor renovations over the years.
Site
4 Park Avenue is in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 33rd Street on the south, Park Avenue on the east, and 34th Street on the north. The building's land lot has a total area of. It measures from north to south and from west to east. An entrance to the New York City Subway's 33rd Street station is directly outside the building's southeast corner. The building is on the same block as the Madison Belmont Building to the west. Other nearby buildings include 2 Park Avenue to the south, 3 Park Avenue to the east, B. Altman and Company Building to the northwest, and 29 East 32nd Street to the southwest.The adjacent portion of Park Avenue slopes upward from south to north. The site was part of the 18th-century estate of merchant Robert Murray. In the 1860s, after the Park Avenue Tunnel was built, the segment of Fourth Avenue between 34th and 40th Streets was renamed Park Avenue, while the avenue's name south of 34th Street remained unchanged. Since the house numbering system reset at the southern end of Park Avenue, the Vanderbilt Hotel and other buildings between 32nd and 34th Streets originally had Fourth Avenue addresses. The segment from 32nd to 34th Streets, outside the current building, was renamed Park Avenue in 1924, at which time the building gained a Park Avenue address. Even before the renumbering, the Vanderbilt Hotel had marketed itself as being at "East 34th Street and Park Avenue" despite technically being on Fourth Avenue.
Fourth and Park Avenues in Murray Hill had been developed with upscale residences by the 1870s. The residences included those of the Vanderbilt family, who built Grand Central Depot for the New York and Harlem Railroad several blocks north in 1871. The Vanderbilt family moved uptown in 1880 but retained ownership of the site. Just before present-day 4 Park Avenue was developed, the land had been occupied by six buildings.
Architecture
4 Park Avenue was designed by Warren and Wetmore in the neoclassical style and developed by Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt in 1912. Numerous other contractors were involved in the construction process. As built, it was 22 stories high and contained three full basements, as well as a partial fourth basement level. Emporis cites the building as being 20 stories and high. The building's modern appearance dates to a renovation by Schuman, Lichtenstein & Claman between 1965 and 1967.Form and facade
Lowest stories
When the building was constructed, it was decorated with gray brick and white architectural terracotta. The terracotta at the base was designed by the Hartford Faience Company. The ornament consisted of cream-colored low reliefs, while the walls were made of mottled, semi-glazed brick in blue-grey and plum colors. Originally, the base of the building contained large windows with semicircular lunette windows at their tops. The lunettes were surrounded by Adam style frames that resembled fans. The entrance was at the center of the Park Avenue elevation and contained a canopy. There is a sealed service entrance on 49 East 33rd Street, leading to a tunnel.In 1967, the lowest three floors were redesigned with a glass and travertine facade. Some of the original ornamentation from the lowest floors, including three medallions measuring and twenty-four pieces of relief, are preserved in a private garden at 433 East 58th Street in Sutton Place, Manhattan. The entrance to the apartments on the upper floors is directly on Park Avenue and carries the address 4 Park Avenue. The offices on the lower floors are accessed from 33rd and 34th Streets and originally carried the address 6 Park Avenue.
Upper stories
Above the base, the building is designed with two light courts facing Park Avenue. These divided the upper stories into three wings, arranged in an "E" shape. When the building was used as a hotel, this allowed each guest to have an exterior window. Each wing measures three bays wide, while the side elevations measure five bays wide. There is a band course of brick and stone above the 4th story, as well as balustrades in front of the light courts on that story. The 5th-story windows contain ornate terracotta frames, while the 6th- through 18th-story windows have a simpler design. The western frontage was designed as a fireproof barrier without any windows. The light courts, combined with the narrowness of the site, required that the hotel be taller than most others in New York City at the time of its construction. The brick and terracotta facade was preserved when the building was renovated in the 1960s.On the top three stories, the building was ornately decorated with terracotta motifs such as lozenges, lions' heads, helmets, and colonnettes. At the 19th story, each window has a shallow pediment, which supports a balustrade that protrudes from each of the 20th-story windows. In addition, each of the 20th-story windows is separated by a terracotta panel with a pattern. There are stone trusses across the light courts at this level. On the top two stories, there are double-height round arches made of terracotta. The windows at the 21st story contain pediments above them.
Instead of a protruding cornice, the Vanderbilt Hotel was topped by a curved parapet that contained classical heads and lace decorations, as well as electric lights. The hotel was one of the first buildings in New York City to illuminate its roof at night. The parapet measured tall. The roof was coated with asbestos as a fireproofing measure. The terracotta at the pinnacle was made by New York Architectural Terra Cotta. The roof has 36 sculpted terracotta heads, each measuring high and weighing. Each sculpture depicts either the grinning classical god Bacchus, who had a beard, or a smiling face of unclear gender, who did not have a beard. Another 18 sculptures, along with the parapet, were removed in 1966 when four penthouse apartments were built on the top floors. Renovation architect Peter Claman, an unnamed art dealer, and the Brooklyn Museum each took some of the busts, which ended up as far away as Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Mechanical and structural features
The mechanical equipment was placed in the hotel's subbasements. There were several Babcock & Wilcox boilers, which were fed by automatic stokers. Each stoker was supplied by a traveling hopper with a capacity of about, filled by a coal conveyor with continuously moving buckets. Additionally, there were three direct current electric generators that were capable of generating at any one time, as well as a central oiling system and two garbage incinerators. The steam pipes in each room were hidden by marble countertops and asbestos curtains. The hotel had an ice machine, which had a capacity of, for the refrigeration and cooling systems. The iced water was then pumped to pantries on seven stories. There was also a machine capable of filtering, which cleaned the air for the Della Robbia Room in the basement. The original boilers were removed in the 1960s.There were six elevators in total, each with crimson tapestries and a wooden veneer. The elevators were hydraulically powered, with hydraulic cylinders in the basement. In the 1960s, the elevators were converted to cable-hauled cabs, but the old hydraulic cylinders were left in place.
The Vanderbilt Hotel was erected with a steel superstructure, which was then reinforced with masonry. The outer walls of the building contained masonry walls that tapered in thickness from at the bottom to at the top. During the 1960s renovation, the thickness of the exterior walls was reduced by up to 4 inches. The masonry was not laid on a perfectly straight axis. In some of the intermediate stories, the masonry was misaligned by as much as, requiring the installation of custom plumbing fixtures for each of the upper-story apartments, rather than mass-produced fixtures. The upper stories contain floor slabs made of concrete arches. The ceilings of the original hotel measured high. During the 1960s, these were lowered by as much to to accommodate utilities in the ceiling. In the service hallways, the floor slabs are of cement and the walls were wainscoted with thin iron plates. The partition walls are made of gypsum.