Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Once the World’s Largest, a Hotel Goes ‘Poof!’ Before Our Eyes
The Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan was a virtual city within a city. But in the end, nothing could save it.
This was once the largest hotel on earth, with 2,200 rooms, shops, restaurants, its own newspaper, and a telephone number immortalized by the bandleader Glenn Miller with a 1940 song “Pennsylvania 6-5000.”
There were fatal leaps from windows, grifters scamming suckers, proposals accepted and vows broken, possibly all in the same night. Here, a couple of mugs fresh from Sing Sing prison broke into a room to steal cash and jewelry. Here, Prohibition agents stopped a man lugging a travel bag that all but rattled with bottles of Scotch intended for some parched conventioneers. Here, a guest entrusted a young actress of fresh acquaintance with $17,000, only to have both ingénue and dough disappear, to no one’s surprise but his own.
David Holowka, an architect who leads walking tours of the neighborhood’s at-risk buildings, said that the hotel could have been repurposed and its history celebrated, as other cities have done with older structures. Instead, he said, New York “is just throwing its architectural heritage out the window.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/n...vania-nyc.html
As much as I love architectural classics, the Penn, and its business, was getting outdated. Add to that the pandemic, and you have a hotel that's going to go.
Oh, by the way, in the 80s, I saw Knick players escort their women across the street, to the Penn, after a game.
They're going to replace the hotel with a sky scraper larger than the Empire State Building - a huge waste of money especially since many people are working from home and the commercial real estate market is about to collapse just like banks due to high interest rates.
It was long overdue. I worked there early 2000's. It was a dump. The cheap rates being close to major attractions was the only draw. Homeless and other characters would wander in and cause trouble. The check in lines would be as long as an airport. Guests would often get off line to complain to another dept about it, then would have to go to the back of the line which would grow quickly. It was the Hotel Statler in its heyday and was a classy place when it first opened too.
They also want to tear down the Stewart hotel right across the street from it and give the land to the MTA or Amtrak (I forgot) so that platforms can be widened and congestion can be reduced. I live in the area albeit in a new building yet my lease has some verbiage about "eminent domain" and how leases will be canceled if it is decided the MTA, Port Authority Path, Amtrak or whomever else needs the land for the expansion.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
