Sherry Netherland Hotel

The Sherry Netherland Hotel is a 38-story hotel located at 781 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 59th Street in Manhattan, New York City. It was designed and built by Schultze & Weaver with Buchman & Kahn.[1] Construction began in 1926, and the upper floors suffered a spectacular fire in 1927 before the building was completed;[2] the flames were said to have been visible from Long Island. The fire ignited a debate in the press concerning the ability of technology to put out fires in high-rise buildings. The hotel was finished later in 1927.[3] The building is 570 feet high, and was noted as the tallest apartment-hotel in New York City when it opened. It houses 165 apartments that were converted to co-ops in 1954.[4]

The site had been occupied since the early 1890s by the Hotel Netherland, designed by William Hume for William Waldorf Astor, a member of the prominent Astor family. The previous structure was among the first steel-framed buildings in the city and it enjoyed a reputation for being a very fashionable hotel and location in its day. Demolition began in the early winter of 1926, and the new "tower" apartment hotel began to replace it, occupying the same footprint and frontage on Fifth Avenue. In March, 1927, construction was almost completed and the property was turned over to Louis Sherry, Inc., a subsidiary of Boomer-duPont Properties Corporation. Lucius Boomer was a noted hotel operator and was also affiliated with the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, while Louis Sherry was a noted restaurateur, famous for ice creams and other confections, and had run a hotel associated with his name and restaurant at 44th Street and Fifth Avenue, closing it soon after Prohibition. Sherry had died before his name became associated with the new venture.

At the time of the hotel's construction, the Vanderbilt mansion, diagonally across Fifth Avenue, was being demolished. Ornamental friezes from that mansion were installed in the Sherry's lobby, whose design was inspired by the ornately painted and vaulted Vatican Library. Because of Prohibition, the Sherry was designed with smaller public restaurant square footage than other pre-War hotels.

The Sherry-Netherland is located within the Upper East Side Historic District, which was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1981.[5]

References

Notes
  1. ^ White, Norval & Willensky, Elliot (2000). AIA Guide to New York City (4th ed.). New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0812931076. , p.382
  2. ^ thequintessential (2009-06-02). "Sherry-Netherland Hotel Fire". Iconic Photos. WordPress.com. http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/sherry-netherland-hotel-fire/. Retrieved 2010-04-07. 
  3. ^ Schultze, Leonard; Weaver, Spencer Fullerton; Lamonaca, Marianne; Mogul, Jonathan (2005). Grand Hotels of the Jazz Age: The Architecture of Schultze & Weaver. Miami Beach: Wolfsonian-Florida International University. p. 197. ISBN 156898555X. 
  4. ^ Toy, Vivian S. (February 25, 2010). "Geffen Buys Fifth Avenue Co-op for $14 Million". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/realestate/topdeal.html. Retrieved 2010-03-21. 
  5. ^ New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Guide to New York City Landmarks (4th ed.) New York:Wiley, 2009. ISBN 978-0-470-28963-1, p.154

External links

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