Hotel Pennsylvania - Hail and Farewell?

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May 8, 2022
Contact:
Sam Turvey, sturveysa@gmail.com

Rumination Number 7

HOTEL PENNSYLVANIA - HAIL AND FAREWELL?

It seems the landmarks law motivated by Penn Station’s demolition in 1963 can’t protect its set piece across 7th Avenue in 2022.

Another piece of McKim, Mead and White’s Trilogy at Penn Station

will soon be lost to the “Vornado Campus”.

Faked Blight Does not Make Right!

Hotel Pennsylvania, left of the old Penn Station
Painting - © 2017, Patricia Melvin

Hotel Pennsylvania-Ionic Columned Entry Colonnade
Credit - Art & Architecture Magazine

The Pennsylvania Hotel still stands, but inside, Vornado is demolishing it floor by floor. The facade is screened, dump trucks are outside, and neighbors report explosive noises. Steve Roth, Vornado’s CEO, is speculating that if the state gives him more air rights, the site would be more valuable than this historic building which is part of our City’s heritage.

To be clear, the Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that property owners do not have the constitutional right to the speculative value of their properties. But Roth is speculating anyway, figuring he can bend the Governor to his will.

The Hotel Pennsylvania “may have been a grande dame in its time,” Steven Roth told Vornado shareholders its annual letter this spring, but, Roth declared, it is “decades past its glory and sell-by date.” [Untapped NY]

It is odd Roth should say this. What is truly past its sell date is his and the Governor and the New York State Economic Development State Corporation's 1950’s failed urban renewal style “neighborhood cleansing” of one of New York’s last truly multi-use and vibrant neighborhoods.

Virtually everyone agrees this neighborhood is not blighted; even Daniel Biederman, leader of the 34th Street Business Improvement District and a cheerleader for the demolition.

As John Massengale of CNU NYC and others, including the Daily News have regularly pointed out, the only blight in the neighborhood is the “border vacuums” at street level caused by Madison Square Garden or the current abhorrent Penn Station itself.

Hotel Pennsylvania with the Empire State Building in the background.
Vornado plans a taller office tower which will obstruct the sightlines.
Yet, the Hotel Martinique can be seen in construction scaffolding under the green mansard roof at the end of the block to the right and will grace us for another century.
Credit - Rob James

Hotel Pennsylvania with demolition scaffolding.
Credit - Rob James

Death Spiral Continues,
Steel I-beams jut out of Hotel Pennsylvania's windows
Credit - Sam Turvey

HAIL!
It was once the largest hotel in the world with 2,200 guest rooms when it opened in 1919. The Pennsylvania Hotel was meant to be a companion piece to Pennsylvania Station and the Farley Post Office.

The Hotel Penn, directly across 7th Avenue from Penn Station was designed as part of a composition, all by McKim, Mead & White. The Farley’s Corinthian Columns were meant to complement the original Penn Station’s doric colonnade with the Hotel Penn’s ionic colonnade completing the triptych. The lower limestone facade of the hotel was intentionally designed to closely mirror the architecture of Pennsylvania Station.

Original Lobby of Hotel Pennsylvania
Credit - Art & Architecture Magazine

Before demolition, lobby of Hotel Pennsylvania
Credit - Tripadvisor

It was the first hotel that had “valet doors” — little compartments next to the room door where guests could leave shoes and clothes to be polished or laundered.

In the 1930’s and 40’s, the Café Rouge at Hotel Pennsylvania was one of the most popular nightclubs in New York City and was home to Big Bands at the height of their heyday. Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Count Basie, and the Andrews Sisters regularly performed at the Café Rouge as it broadcast live music across the country.

Fountain at Café Rouge - if you hear “vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme”,
you have some idea of how magical this backlit artifact of city life once was.
Credit - Wikiwand

The hotel’s phone number, Pennsylvania 6-5000, was the only words to an instrumental popularized by the Glenn Miller Band, who frequently stayed at the hotel and performed there.

The Hotel was a frequent stop for out of towners visiting the 1939 World’s Fair and served as a grand introduction to New York. While it’s present owner has left it to an unflattering state, it would easily compare favorably to the Plaza or Martinique Hotels – its architecture is that good.

The entrances to the Hotel Pennsylvania, the Plaza, and the Martinique
(left to right). What a tragedy it would be to let the Hotel Pennsylvania be demolished, when an appropriate restoration or adaptive reuse could add
so much to our built environment and cityscape.
Credits – (left to right), Wikimedia, Flickr, New York Post)

Café Rouge - In its prime.
Credit - Nygeschichte Blogspot

FAREWELL?
The hotel has gone through a whole list of names: the Hotel Pennsylvania became the Hotel Statler, then the Statler Hilton, then the Statler again, then the New York Penta, and finally, coming full circle, it went back to being the Hotel Pennsylvania.

Vornado bought the hotel in 1997 and announced plans to renovate and create a new modern hotel. The renovations were never made, but the Hotel Pennsylvania continued to make money; $37.9 million in 2007.

In February 2008, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission denied the request for landmarking. The reasons for denial are still being debated.

Steve Roth announced plans to “invest aggressively” in renovating Hotel Pennsylvania and to turn it into an upscale destination for tourists and visitors in 2013. The renovations were never made.

Through planned neglect, the grand dame Hotel Pennsylvania became a down-at-the-heels dowager, lowered her prices, and became a magnet for discount-seekers and visiting students to the United Nations and bands who came to march in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

Over the years, Roth has announced his intention to tear down the hotel, only to be followed by announcements of renovation. The renovations were never made.

In early 2021, Governor Cuomo announced the creation of a mega-project; the Empire Station complex. Vornado would be given the rights to demolish buildings and construct up to 10 supertall office buildings to finance the renovations for Penn Station. Steve Roth was the largest contributor to Governor Cuomo.

By September, International Content Liquidations, Inc. began a liquidation sale of the contents of the hotel. The original 22-foot-tall fountain in the former Café Rouge was salvaged and there were plans for a museum.

As part of the plan, the Hotel Pennsylvania would be demolished and in its place would be a building taller than the Empire State Building. Penn 15, the proposed supertall structure which would destroy sightlines to the Empire State Building, was described by one critic as a bunch of building blocks bought at Target.

The Sophomorically-Named Penn 15
Credit - NY YIMBY

There is mounting opposition to the absurdist creation dubbed “Penn 15.” Some have called for a protected view corridor around the Empire State Building to prevent the building of taller buildings that would block sightlines of one of the City’s most popular tourist attractions.

Perhaps that explains the rush to demolish Hotel Pennsylvania as there are no plans to immediately construct Penn 15.

A vacant lot lying empty for years would constitute the blight that Vornado and Governor Huchol have cited as reasons to demolish a neighborhood.

“Greed is good,” said Gordon Gekko, in the movie, Wall Street. Steve Roth and Vornado would now have us believe that blight is good.

ON THE OTHER HAND . . .

Consider the Hotel Martinique.

Hotel Martinique
Credit - Hilton Curio Collection

The 16-story building started out in 1910 as an elegant French Renaissance–style residence in what was then part of the theater district. But as the theater district moved north, the Martinique slid into decline.

In the 70’s the Martinique became a welfare hotel for those experiencing homelessness and the horror stories abounded.

Instead of being demolished, the Martinique was rescued by investors from Oklahoma in 2021 and will reopen in stages while being renovated.

Hotel Martinique - Reborn
Credit - New York Post

HOPING FOR ANOTHER MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET

At the Hotel Pennsylvania, the lobby is gone and interior demolition continues.

There was and could be a viable plan to reinvent the Hotel Pennsylvania. Below are renderings for a proposed reuse of Hotel Pennsylvania as a multi-boutique hotel, once commissioned by Vornado itself from Richard Cameron.

Hotel Pennsylvania
Credit - rendering by Richard Cameron, Atelier & Co.

Credit - rendering by Richard Cameron, Atelier & Co.

Closing Thoughts
Let us hope some intrepid members of the public, the press, our elected officials, the courts if need be – can rise to the occasion and stop this madness. Or will we allow our heritage to be wheedled away by someone whose grandiose plans are allowed to trump the common good? As Shakespeare said in Julius Caesar, “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

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For further information:
A History of Hotel Pennsylvania
Notable Events at Hotel Pennsylvania
The Music of Hotel Pennsylvania
Steve Roth on Hotel Pennsylvania
Steve Roth on Blight
Vornado Finally Kicks Off Work on Massive Penn District Project
Additional Pictures of Hotel Pennsylvania (Art and Architecture Magazine, 1925
Public Advocate Juuane Williams Press Conference at Hotel Pennsylvania
Vimeo Video of PEnnsylvania 6-500 performed at Hotel Pennsylvania (May 12, 2021)

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