Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 260: Hotel History: Terminal City, The Postum Building, NY

Posted on January 31, 2022 by Stanley Turkel

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 260: Hotel History: Terminal City, The Roosevelt Hotel and The Postum Building, New York

Stanley Turkel | January 25, 2022

By Stanley Turkel, CMHS

Hotel History: Terminal City (1911)

Terminal City originated as an idea during the reconstruction of Grand Central Terminal from the old Grand Central Station from 1903 to 1913. The railroad owner, the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, wished to increase capacity of the station’s train shed and rail yards, and so it devised a plan to bury the tracks and platforms and create two levels to its new train shed, more than doubling the station’s capacity. At the same time, chief engineer William J. Wilgus was the first to realize the potential of selling air rights, the right to build atop the now-underground train shed, for real-estate development. Grand Central’s construction thus produced several blocks of prime real estate in Manhattan, stretching from 42^nd to 51^st Streets between Madison and Lexington Avenues. The Realty and Terminal Company typically profited from the air rights in one of two ways: constructing the structures and renting them out, or selling the air rights to private developers who would construct their own buildings.

William Wilgus saw these air rights as a means of funding the terminal’s construction. Architects Reed & Stem originally proposed a new Metropolitan Opera House, a Madison Square Garden, and a National Academy of Design building. Ultimately, the railroad decided to develop the area into a commercial office district.

Planning for the development began long before the terminal was completed. In 1903, the New York Central Railroad created a derivative, the New York State Realty and Terminal Company, to oversee construction above Grand Central’s rail yards. The New Haven Railroad joined the venture later on. The blocks on the north side of the terminal were later dubbed “Terminal City” or the “Grand Central Zone”.

By 1906, news of the plans for Grand Central was already boosting the values of nearby properties. In conjunction with this project, the segment of Park Avenue above Grand Central’s rail yards received a landscaped median and attracted some of the most expensive apartment hotels. By the time the terminal opened in 1913, the blocks surrounding it were each valued at $2 million to $3 million. Terminal City soon became Manhattan’s most desirable commercial and office district. From 1904 to 1926, land values along Park Avenue doubled, and in the Terminal City area increased 244%. A 1920 New York Times article said that the “development of the Grand Central property has in many respects surpassed original expectations. With its hotels, office buildings, apartments and underground streets it not only is a wonderful railroad terminal, but also a great civic centre.”

The district came to include office buildings such as the Grand Central Palace, Chrysler Building, Chanin Building, Bowery Savings Bank Building, and Pershing Square Building; luxury apartment houses along Park Avenue; an array of high-end hotels that included the Commodore, Biltmore, Roosevelt, Marguery, Chatham, Barclay, Park Lane, Waldorf Astoria and the Yale Club of New York.

These structures were designed in the neoclassical style, complementing the terminal’s architecture. Although Architects Warren and Wetmore designed most of these buildings, it also monitored other architects’ plans (such as those of James Gamble Rogers, who designed the Yale Club) to ensure that the style of the new buildings was compatible with that of Terminal City. In general, the site plan of Terminal City was derived from the City Beautiful movement, which encouraged aesthetic harmony between adjacent buildings. The consistency of the architectural styles, as well as the vast funding provided by investment bankers, contributed to Terminal City’s success.

The Graybar Building, completed in 1927, was one of the last projects of Terminal City. The building incorporates many of Grand Central’s train platforms, as well as the Graybar Passage, a hallway with vendors and train gates stretching from the terminal to Lexington Avenue. In 1929, New York Central built its headquarters in a 34-story building, later renamed the Helmsley Building, which straddled Park Avenue north of the terminal. Development slowed drastically during the Great Depression, and part of Terminal City was gradually demolished or reconstructed with steel-and-glass designs after World War II.

The City Club of New York, (where I served as Chairman of the Board from 1979 to 1990) recently sent a letter to the N.Y. Landmarks Preservation Commission urging Landmarks protection for the Hotel Roosevelt (George B. Post and Son 1924) and the Postum Building (Cross & Cross 1923).

The Roosevelt Hotel is a historic hotel located at 45 East 45^th Street (between Madison Avenue and Vanderbilt Avenue) in Midtown Manhattan. Named in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt, the Roosevelt opened on September 22, 1924. It closed permanently on December 18, 2020.

There are a total of 1,025 rooms in the hotel, including 52 suites. The 3,900-square-foot Presidential Suite has four bedrooms, a kitchen, formal living and dining areas, and a wrap-around terrace. The rooms are traditionally decorated, with mahogany wood furniture and light-colored bed coverings.

There were several restaurants within the hotel, including:

“The Roosevelt Grill”, serving American food and regional specialties for breakfast.
The “Madison Club Lounge”, a bar and lounge with a 30-foot mahogany bar, stained glass windows, and a pair of fireplaces.
The “Vander Bar”, a bistro with modern décor, serving craft beers

The Roosevelt has 30,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space, including two ballrooms and 17 additional meeting rooms ranging in size from 300 to 1,100 square feet.

The Roosevelt Hotel was built by Niagara Falls businessman Frank A. Dudley and operated by the United Hotels Company. The hotel was designed by the firm of George B. Post & Son, and leased from The New York State Realty and Terminal Company, a division of the New York Central Railroad. The hotel, built at a cost of $12,000,000 (equivalent to $181,212,000 in 2020), was the first to incorporate store fronts instead of bars in its sidewalk facades, as the latter had been prohibited due to Prohibition. The Roosevelt Hotel was at one time linked with Grand Central Terminal via an underground passage that connected the hotel to the train terminal. The passageway now terminates just across the street from the hotel’s East 45^th Street entrance. The Roosevelt housed the first guest pet facility and child care service in The Teddy Bear Room and had the first in-house doctor.

Hilton

Conrad Hilton purchased the Roosevelt in 1943, calling it “a fine hotel with grand spaces” and making the Roosevelt’s Presidential Suite his home. In 1947, the Roosevelt became the first hotel to have a television set in every room.

Hilton Hotels purchased the Statler Hotels chain in 1954. As a result, they owned multiple large hotels in many major cities, as in New York, where they owned the Roosevelt, The Plaza, The Waldorf-Astoria, the New Yorker Hotel and the Hotel Statler. Soon after, the federal government filed an antitrust action against Hilton. To resolve the suit, Hilton agreed to sell a number of their hotels, including the Roosevelt Hotel, which was sold to the Hotel Corporation of America on February 29, 1956 for $2,130,000.

Pakistan International Airlines

By 1978, the hotel was owned by the struggling Penn Central, which put it up for sale, along with two other nearby hotels, The Biltmore and The Barclay. The three hotels were sold to the Loews Corporation for $55 million. Loews immediately resold the Roosevelt to developer Paul Milstein for $30 million.

In 1979, Milstein leased the hotel to the Pakistan International Airlines with an option to purchase the building after 20 years at a set price of $36.5 million. Prince Faisal bin Khalid Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia was one of the investors in the 1979 deal. The hotel lost its operators $70 million over the following years, due to its outdated facilities.

In 2005, PIA bought out its Saudi partner in a deal that included the prince’s share in the Hôtel Scribe in Paris, in exchange for $40 million and PIA’s share of the Riyadh Minhal Hotel (a Holiday Inn located on property owned by the prince). In July 2007, PIA announced that it was putting the hotel up for sale. The increasing profitability of the hotel, at the same time as the airline itself started to incur massive losses, resulted in the sale being abandoned. In 2011, The Roosevelt once again underwent extensive renovations, but remained open during the process.

In October 2020, it was announced the hotel would permanently close due to continued financial losses associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The final day of operation was December 18, 2020.

Guy Lombardo began leading the house band of the Roosevelt Grill in 1929; it was here that Lombardo also began holding an annual New Year’s Eve radio broadcast with his band, The Royal Canadians.

Lawrence Welk began his career at the Roosevelt Hotel in the summers when Lombardo took his music to Long Island. Music was piped live into each room via radio. Hugo Gernsback (of Hugo Award fame) started WRNY from a room on the 18^th floor of the Roosevelt Hotel broadcasting live via a 125-foot tower on the roof.

From 1943 to 1955 the Roosevelt Hotel served as the New York City office and residence of Governor Thomas E. Dewey. Dewey’s primary residence was his farm in Pawling, in upstate New York, but he used Suite 1527 in the Roosevelt to conduct most of his official business in the city. In the 1948 presidential election, which Dewey lost to incumbent President Harry S. Truman in a major upset, Dewey, his family, and staff listened to the election returns in Suite 1527 of the Roosevelt.

Terminal City, the Roosevelt Hotel and the Postum Building are the heart of New York. They should be given Landmarks designation and protection as soon as possible since the Roosevelt Hotel is closed and the owners of the Postum building have hired an architect to “explore options”.

My Latest Book “Great American Hotel Architects Volume 2” was published in 2020.

All of my following books can be ordered from AuthorHouse by visiting www.stanleyturkel.com and clicking on the book’s title:

Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2009)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York (2011)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels East of the Mississippi (2013)
Hotel Mavens: Lucius M. Boomer, George C. Boldt, Oscar of the Waldorf (2014)
Great American Hoteliers Volume 2: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2016)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels West of the Mississippi (2017)
Hotel Mavens Volume 2: Henry Morrison Flagler, Henry Bradley Plant, Carl Graham Fisher (2018)
Great American Hotel Architects Volume I (2019)
Hotel Mavens: Volume 3: Bob and Larry Tisch, Curt Strand, Ralph Hitz, Cesar Ritz, Raymond Orteig (2020)

If You Need an Expert Witness:

Stanley Turkel has served as an expert witness in more than 42 hotel-related cases. His extensive hotel operating experience is beneficial in cases involving:

slip and fall accidents
wrongful deaths
fire and carbon monoxide injuries
hotel security issues
dram shop requirements
hurricane damage and/or business interruption cases

Feel free to call him at no charge on 917-628-8549 to discuss any hotel-related expert witness assignment.147

ABOUT STANLEY TURKEL

Stanley Turkel was designated as the 2020 Historian of the Year by Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He had previously been so designated in 2015 and 2014.

This award is presented to an individual for making a unique contribution in the research and presentation of historic hotels and whose work has encouraged a wide discussion of greater understanding and enthusiasm for American History.

Turkel is the most widely-published hotel consultant in the United States. He operates his hotel consulting practice serving as an expert witness in hotel-related cases, provides asset management and hotel franchising consultation. He is certified as a Master Hotel Supplier Emeritus by the Educational Institute of the American Hotel and Lodging Association.

Instagram

hotelonlinenews Instagram post 18072439732009889 Instagram post 18037678936156831 Instagram post 17870090452391124 Instagram post 17976176743256949 Instagram post 17993811919233333 Follow on Instagram

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 259: Hotel History: The Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia

Posted on January 10, 2022 by Stanley Turkel

by Stanley Turkel, CMHS

Hotel History: The Greenbrier (682 rooms)

The original hotel, the Grand Central Hotel, was built on this site in 1858. It was known as “The White” and later “The Old White”. Beginning in 1778, people came to follow the local Native American tradition to “take the waters” to restore their health. In the 19^th century, visitors drank and bathed in the sulphur water to cure everything from rheumatism to an upset stomach

In 1910, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway purchased the historic resort property and embarked upon a major expansion. By 1913, the railroad had added The Greenbrier Hotel (the central section of today’s hotel), a new mineral bath department ( the building that includes the grand indoor pool) and an 18-hole golf course (now called The Old White Course) designed by the most prominent contemporary golf architect, Charles Blair Macdonald. In 1914, for the first time, the resort, now renamed The Greenbrier, was open year-round. That year, President and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson spent their Easter holiday at The Greenbrier.

Business boomed in the 1920s and The Greenbrier took its place within high society’s traveling network that stretched from Palm Beach, Florida to Newport, Rhode Island. The obsolete Old White Hotel was demolished in 1922, which led to a substantial rebuilding of The Greenbrier Hotel in 1930. This refurbishment doubled the number of guestrooms to five hundred. Cleveland architect Philip Small redesigned the hotel’s main entrance and added both the Mount Vernon-inspired Virginia Wing to the south and the signature North Entrance facade. Mr. Small’s design mixed elements from the resort’s Southern historical roots with motifs from the Old White Hotel.

During the Second World War, the United States government appropriated The Greenbrier for two very different uses. First, the State Department leased the hotel for seven months immediately after the U.S. entry into the war. It was used to relocate hundreds of German, Japanese, and Italian diplomats and their families from Washington, D.C. until their exchange for American diplomats, similarly stranded overseas, was completed. In September 1942, the U.S. Army purchased The Greenbrier and converted it into a two thousand-bed hospital named Ashford General Hospital. In four years, 24,148 soldiers were admitted and treated, while the resort served the war effort as a surgical and rehabilitation center. Soldiers were encouraged to use the resort’s range of sports and recreation facilities as part of their recuperation process. At the war’s conclusion, the Army closed the hospital.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway reacquired the property from the government in 1946. The company immediately commissioned a comprehensive interior renovation by the noted designer Dorothy Draper. As Architectural Digest described her, Draper was “a true artiest of the design world [who] became a celebrity in the modern sense of the word, virtually creating the image of the decorator in the popular mind.” She remained the resort’s decorator into the 1960s. Upon her retirement, her protégé Carleton Varney purchased the firm and became The Greenbrier’s decorating consultant.

When The Greenbrier reopened in 1948, Sam Snead returned as golf pro to the resort where his career had begun in the late 1930s. For two decades in the post war years, he traveled the globe at the pinnacle of his lengthy career. More than any other individual, Sam Snead established The Greenbrier’s reputation as one of the world’s foremost golf destinations. In later years, he was named Golf Pro Emeritus, a position he held until his death on May 23, 2002.

In the late 1950s, the U.S. government once again approached The Greenbrier for assistance, this time in the construction of an Emergency Relocation Center ̶ a bunker or bomb shelter ̶ to be occupied by the U.S. Congress in case of war. Built during the cold war and operated in secrecy for 30 years, it is a huge 112,000 square foot underground fallout shelter, intended for use by the entire United States Congress in the event of nuclear war.

Excavations began in 1958 and construction was completed in 1962. By top-secret agreement, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway built a new addition to the resort, the West Virginia Wing and the bunker was surreptitiously constructed under it. With concrete walls up to five feet thick, it is the size of two football fields stacked underground. It was built to shelter 1100 people: 535 senators and representatives and their aides. For the next 30 years, government technicians, posing as employees of a dummy company, Forsythe Associates, maintained the place regularly checking its communications and scientific equipment as well as updating the magazines and paperbacks in the lounge areas. At any point during those years, one telephone call from officials in Washington, D.C., fearing an imminent attack on the capital, would have turned the lavish resort into an active participant in the national defense system. At the end of the Cold War and prompted by exposure in the press in 1992, the project was terminated and the bunker decommissioned. According to a May 6, 2013 article in the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Supreme Court planned to relocate to the Grove Park Inn, Asheville, N.C. in the event of a nuclear attack.

In the overt world above the bunker, resort life proceeded normally as Jack Nicklaus arrived to redesign the fifty-year old Greenbrier Course, bringing it up to championship standards for the 1979 Ryder Cup Matches. That course was also the site of three PGA Seniors tournaments in the 1980s and the 1994 Solheim Cup competition. In 1999, the Meadows Course evolved when Bob Cupp redesigned, rerouted and upgraded the older Lakeside Course, a project that included the creation of new Golf Academy. Sam Snead’s career was enshrined when the Golf Club was virtually rebuilt featuring the restaurant bearing his name with museum quality displays of memorabilia from his personal collection.

In a surprise announcement on May 7, 2009, Jim Justice, a West Virginia entrepreneur with a long-standing appreciation for The Greenbrier, became the owner of America’s most fabled resort. He purchased it from the CSX Corporation which, through its predecessor companies the Chessie System and the C&O Railway, had owned the resort for ninety-nine years. Mr. Justice turned his considerable energies into plans to revitalize America’s Resort. He immediately presented his vision of a casino designed by Carleton Varney that included shops, restaurants and entertainment in a smoke-free environment. The Casino Club at The Greenbrier opened in grand fashion on July 2, 2010. Simultaneously, Mr. Justice arranged to relocate a PGA Tour event named The Greenbrier Classic under the direction of The Greenbrier’s new Golf Pro Emeritus, Tom Watson. The first tournament was held July 26 through August 1, 2010.

Twenty-six presidents have stayed at The Greenbrier. The President’s Cottage Museum is a two-story building with exhibits about these visits and the history of The Greenbrier. The Greenbrier is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a member of Historic Hotels of America. It is a Forbes Four-Star and AAA Five-Diamond Award winner.

The Greenbrier’s complete history is chronicled in great detail supplemented by photographs from the resort’s archives in The History of The Greenbrier: America’s Resort by Dr. Robert S. Conte, the resort’s Resident Historian since 1978.

My Latest Book “Great American Hotel Architects Volume 2” was published in 2020.

All of my following books can be ordered from AuthorHouse by visiting www.stanleyturkel.com and clicking on the book’s title:

Great American Hoteliers: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2009)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels in New York (2011)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels East of the Mississippi (2013)
Hotel Mavens: Lucius M. Boomer, George C. Boldt, Oscar of the Waldorf (2014)
Great American Hoteliers Volume 2: Pioneers of the Hotel Industry (2016)
Built To Last: 100+ Year-Old Hotels West of the Mississippi (2017)
Hotel Mavens Volume 2: Henry Morrison Flagler, Henry Bradley Plant, Carl Graham Fisher (2018)
Great American Hotel Architects Volume I (2019)
Hotel Mavens: Volume 3: Bob and Larry Tisch, Curt Strand, Ralph Hitz, Cesar Ritz, Raymond Orteig (2020)

If You Need an Expert Witness:

Stanley Turkel has served as an expert witness in more than 42 hotel-related cases. His extensive hotel operating experience is beneficial in cases involving:

slip and fall accidents
wrongful deaths
fire and carbon monoxide injuries
hotel security issues
dram shop requirements
hurricane damage and/or business interruption cases

Feel free to call him at no charge on 917-628-8549 to discuss any hotel-related expert witness assignment.269

Stanley Turkel, CMHS

Monthly Archives: January 2022

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 260: Hotel History: Terminal City, The Postum Building, NY

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 260: Hotel History: Terminal City, The Roosevelt Hotel and The Postum Building, New York

ABOUT STANLEY TURKEL

Categories

Instagram

Tags

RELATED NEWS:

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 259: Hotel History: The Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia

ABOUT STANLEY TURKEL

Categories

Instagram

Tags

RELATED NEWS: