Gotham's Gems: Urbanite visits New Yorker Hotel
Images from the collection of Joe Kinney. Check out our photo galleries HERE , HERE, and HERE and check out Lauren Johnston's great video tour of the hotel with Joe Kinney.
The maze of tunnels under New York includes one you probably never heard of. It lies 30 feet below the intersection of West 34th Street and Eighth Avenue and links the New Yorker Hotel to Penn Station.
This tunnel is no utilitarian slouch: It's sheathed in sumptuous Art Deco tile and long-empty glass sign displays that promoted Duke Ellington shows to travelers being whisked through the passage by bellhops. You'd say, "Take me to the New Yorker and you wouldn’t have to go outside,” Joe Kinney, the hotel's engineer and historian, said during a recent tour of the hotel.
Indeed, the New Yorker's historic spirit is filling all of its corridors again, as a room-by-room renovation draws toward completion, powered by the strong Art Deco genes that gave it life almost 80 years ago. But for many of those years, the hotel had lost touch with its history. It closed in 1972 and was purchased by the Unification Church. In 1994, it reopened under its original name, but only now is it truly reclaiming its lost history and pride of place among the city's hotels.
It's easy to see how Kinney, 57, who joined the staff in 1996, became captivated by its history, and how he was able to sell senior management on the idea that the hotel's future lay in its past. The striking pyramidical, set-backed tower was financed and built before the Wall Street crash of 1929, and opened into a sobered-up world on Jan. 2, 1930, with the Great Depression already under way.
The 43-story hotel boasted many extremes when it opened: It was the biggest, the tallest, the one with the largest switchboard, the largest kitchen, the largest private power plant. Today, its massive LED sign is a skyline fixture and is possibly the largest of its kind anywhere.
You hear of the ice follies at the Terrace Room, of visits by actor Mickey Rooney and band leader Benny Goodman, and of Nikola Tesla, the electrical genius whose obsession with numbers and his love for pigeons still draw the curious to the hotel, where he spent his final years.
The New Yorker Hotel's historically minded renovation comes at a time when the future of its former swing-era arch enemy, the Hotel Pennsylvania, has been in question, and during a time when the wrecking ball has been tearing down old New York with abandon.
The hotel’s rebirth is due in no small part to Kinney's curiosity and cheer-leading for the hotel's history.
“I feel very happy that I was able to push the Art Deconess of the hotel and that the architects took that into consideration," Kinney said, speaking of the work of the firm Stonehill & Taylor. "They did a great job.”
A quest to save history
Like the Empire State Building, its considerably more famous Art Deco cousin down 34th Street, the New Yorker was born of the high hopes of the 1920s and confronted with the harsh realities of the 1930s.
"The hotel really, really struggled. It never really got over it," Kinney said, but the New Yorker weathered the Depression and World War II years with style. A who's who of celebrities, big bands and high-living swells coursed through its lobby during the 1930s and 1940s, a story Kinney is piecing back together every day through the massive memorabilia collection he continues to build. He has rescued long-lost menus, copies of the hotel's in-house magazine, Caravan, and countless other ephemera that tell the story of one of New York's iconic hotels.
Many of his finds are on eBay, but every so often, a relative of a former employee might stop by with a stunning discovery, or a story that would have otherwise been lost to history. Just the other day, a 92-year-old former bellhop stopped by and, beaming with pride, recalled that he was an employee of the month in 1939. "They’ll give you stuff, if they think it’s going to be put to its best and highest use," Kinney said.
And his passion for hotel history helps tells the story of mid-century New York, and more broadly, American culture.
It's difficult, for instance, to think about Madison Avenue's gift at promoting smoking without considering Johnny Roventini.
The pint-sized pitchman would exclaim "call for Philip Morris" on television for years. Yet he began his career by hailing visitors in the New Yorker's lobby. A Philip Morris executive took a shine to Roventini, and the rest is advertising history.
Tesla, the eccentric inventor of AC current, called room 3327 home. The numbers held a certain magic for him, and it is here that he allegedly kept company with a beloved pigeon, and died after a 10-year stay. (The feds swooped in to clean out his room, just in case the inventor had come up with some plans that could fall into enemy hands. This was January 1943, after all.)
A hotel's secrets
The underground tunnel is certainly a highlight of any tour. Now used for storage, the tunnel poses too many security risks to reopen. And then there's a far more quotidian reason to keep it shut. "Now luggage has wheels on it, they can drag it down Eighth Avenue and walk in our front door,” Kinney said.
Another surprise awaits behind the massive brass door on Eighth Avenue. The door once lead to a branch of Manufacturers Trust bank. The door connotes wealth and security, a comforting or possibly alienating symbol for New Yorkers scraping by during the Depression.
The doors themselves, though, have been shuttered since the Reagan administration, and what lurks behind is a cavernous banking hall dripping with terrazzo flooring, brass railings, and Art Deco murals by the noted artist Louis Jambor.
The banking hall is now undergoing restoration, on track to become a grand ballroom. Once completed, it will return one of New York's great architectural spaces to public use.
Jambor made 26 panels in total for the hotel, with many of them covered under plaster during an insensitive renovation during the 1960s, the "Tupperware architecture," period, Kinney said. For a future renovation project, the hotel might undertake an effort to bring those panels to light. Indeed, the hotel is focused on reclaiming its history, one art mural, old brochure or knick-knack at a time. Kinney’s collection, in fact, may one day become part of an exhibit at the hotel.
“By recapturing and reconstituting the true history of the New Yorker Hotel ... we are actually adding value to this building and even meaning to our working lives," Kinney said.
-- Rolando Pujol
Comments (6)
Bravo Joe! It's great to see someone taking an active interest in NYC history. I must say I was a bit surprised. I knew of the old tunnel that lead from the Hotel Penn, but had no idea the New Yorker also had one.
Please keep up the good work, keep getting the word out about NYC fantastic history. Remember nothing in NYC is safe anymore, and your fortunate that Vornado doesn't own your hotel.
Bellman Johnny's message was "Call for Philip Morris!" -- with emphasis on the end, which came out as "Moreeees." Thank you so very much for a look at The New Yorker Hotel. Nice to know that it isn't a down-at-the-heels old dowager anymore.
Gregory, Bill
Thanks for the kind words!
Joe Kinney
Thank God for people like Mr Joe Kinney! So much of New York City and the outer boros have been lost to the insensitive, non-caring people that ignore what makes this great city what it is. The design and artwork that was part of the art-deco decade can't be found anywhere else. The New Yorker, Chrystler Building, lobby of the RCA Building etc. should & must be preserved & maintained as part of the heritage of this great city. Too much has been lost already never to be replaced. Mosiacs in the subways, street clocks, and other artifacts that can be found nowhere else have been covered or removed. Mr. Kinney is to be commended for his work to restore the New Yorker to its original design and beauty. Paul A. Toomey
Not a slight on this article or you personally, but this hotel is a giant heap of crap. I lived there for 2 years through rude staff, mice infestations and horrible food. In short, the place really has gone downhill. The security does nothing to avoid the homeless from panhandling and harassing its guests. Just all in all not a pleasant place to be.
The article is a great look back to I suppose "What it used to be," and otherwise appreciated. The tunnel surely would have helped me not be constantly harassed on the way back from the subway :)
Dear Anonymous
Your post refers to the past, the '70s and through the early '90s, not the present. It would be the same to say 42nd street between 8th and 7th is a dangerous place full of XXX video stores and massage parlors, is was but not now..
Talk a walk down 42nd street and them visit the New Yorker Hotel, you'll see a big difference in both.
Joe Kinney