Knickerbocker Hotel - NY, NY
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neoc1
N 40° 45.329 W 073° 59.151
18T E 585606 N 4512108
The Beaux Arts style Knickerbocker Hotel, known as "The Knick" and the “42nd Street Country Club”, is located at 142 West 42nd Street in the Times Square section of Manhattan.
Waymark Code: WM16XV3
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 10/26/2022
Views: 0
The Knickerbocker Hotel was commissioned John Jacob Astor IV. The building was designed in the Beaux Arts style in 1901 by the architectural firm of Marvin & Davis together with Bruce Price and opened in 1906. The hotel is prominently located at the corner of W 42nd Street and Broadway.
The Knickerbocker Hotel has a long and storied history. Prominent residents were Enrico Caruso, and George M. Cohan. Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald got engaged to his soon-to-be wife, novelist Zelda Sayre while both were living and writing at the Knickerbocker. Theatrical agent, producer, and director Harry Frazee, the owner of the Boston Red Sox, sold Babe Ruth to Colonel Jacob Ruppert Jr., the owner of the New York Yankees, in the Knickerbocker Hotel Bar. The funds were used by Frazee to pay of the mortgage on Fenwway Park.
Due to prohibition, the hotel closed in 1920 and was converted to an office building known as the Knickerbocker Building. In 1940, it became the headquarters of Newsweek magazine and became known as the Newsweek Building. Newsweek moved out of the building to a new home on Madison Avenue in 1959. It was then rented as the showroom and studio space for businesses in the Garment District and other commercial enterprises. The Knickerbocker building once again reopened as The Knickerbocker Hotel on February 12, 2015.
The third through twelfth floors of the fifteen story high hotel is covered with red brick with terracotta trim. Above is a mansard roof. The main entrance is located on 42nd Street and the building wraps around to Broadway. The hotel is 15 bays wide on the 42nd Street side and 9 bay wide on the Broadway side. The first two floors have plate glass windows and are is used for commercial purposes. The highly decorated blue-green mansard roof wraps around the fronts of the building.
The Kickerbocker Hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
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