The Carlyle Hotel, known formally as The Carlyle, is a combination luxury and residential hotel located at 35 East 76th Street on the northeast corner of Madison Avenue, in the Upper East Side area of New York City. The hotel is designed in Art Deco style and was named after Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle.
Owned since 2001 by Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, the Carlyle is a cooperative with 180 rental rooms and suites and 60 privately owned residences.
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The Carlyle was built by Moses Ginsberg, maternal grandfather of Rona Jaffe.[1] Designed by architects Bien & Prince, it originally opened as a residential hotel, with apartments costing up to $20,000 a year.[2] Apartment hotels had become increasingly popular since World War I. As the economy boomed and skyscrapers rose, New York was transforming so quickly that owning a townhouse began to fall out of fashion.[3] The new thirty-five floor hotel "was to be a masterpiece in the modern idiom, in which shops and restaurants on the lower floors would give residents the convenience and comforts of a "community skyscraper".[4] However, by the time the Carlyle was ready to open its doors, the 1929 stock market crash had decisively ended the boom times. The new hotel struggled, went into receivership in 1931 and was sold to the Lyleson Corporation in 1932.[2] The new owners kept the original management, which was able to dramatically improve the propterty's financial situation through maintaining high occupancy and rates favorable to the hotel's costs. However, the hotel's reputation at this time was "staid rather than ritzy".[5]
The next postwar boom allowed the hotel to take on new high-society prominence. In 1948, the Carlyle was purchased by New York businessman Robert Whittle Downing who began to transform it from a "respectable" address to a "downright fashionable" one, frequented by elegant Europeans.[6] That year, Harry Truman became the first president to visit the Carlyle; each of his successors through Bill Clinton followed suit.[7]
The Carlyle became known as "the New York White House" during the administration of President John F. Kennedy, who owned an apartment on the 34th floor for the ten years prior to his death. He stayed at the apartment in a well-publicized visit for a few days just prior to his inauguration in January 1961. Marilyn Monroe was sneaked in through the service entrance on East 77th Street. After famously singing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" at Kennedy's birthday gala at Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962, Monroe reportedly used a warren of tunnels to enter the Carlyle secretly with Kennedy and friends. Years later, longtime bellman Michael O'Connell recalled, "Those tunnels. President Kennedy knew more about the tunnels than I did".[8] The Carlyle was the last place John F. Kennedy, Jr. ate breakfast before departing on his ill-fated plane trip to Martha's Vineyard with his wife and her sister.[7]
The Council for United Civil Rights Leadership (CUCRL) was organized in a meeting held at the Carlyle. Malcolm X expressed his concerns with having a white man in charge of this new fundraising organization during a November 10, 1963 speech, Message to the Grassroots. He described the hotel (rather than just one suite) as being owned by the Kennedy family.[9]
The hotel is also the source of the name for the Carlyle Group, as it was the location where that firm's founders first met in the mid-1980s.
Despite its brushes with history, the hotel retained a reputation for discretion; in 2000, the New York Times called it a "Palace of Secrets".[7]
The hotel's Café Carlyle has featured a number of well-known jazz performers - notably George Feyer from 1955–1968, and Bobby Short from 1968-2004. Woody Allen and his jazz band have been playing weekly at the café since 1996. Other artists who have performed at the Café Carlyle include Elaine Stritch, Judy Collins, Barbara Cook, Eartha Kitt, John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey, Keely Smith, Rita Moreno, Douglas Hodge, Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley, Debbie Reynolds, Beverly Peer, Melba Moore, Christine Ebersole, Lea Salonga, Kelli O'Hara, Sutton Foster, Paulo Szot, Barb Jungr, and Ute Lemper. Steve Tyrell has been the featured performer in December through New Year's Eve for several years. According to Joe Heller in an article in the New York Times, The Carlyle is the regular residence of Mick Jagger, when he is in New York.
The Café Carlyle is noted for the murals by Marcel Vertes, which were cleaned in the summer of 2007 as part of a renovation and redecoration of the café.[10] The renovation and redecoration was done by interior designer, Scott Salvator, and marked the first significant alterations to the Café since its debut in1955. During the renovations the Café was closed for three months and was widely praised after reopening in September 2007. Salvator removed the dropped acoustical ceiling, exposing two feet of newly found space which allowed for a modern sound and a lighting system, making it appeal to a younger generation.[11][12]
The Carlyle Restaurant was formerly known as Dumonet at the Carlyle.