So, look to your right at this sleek office building. You might be wondering why I have stopped you in front of twenty-two Vanderbilt. Well, beneath that modern granite and glass beats the structural heart of a lost New York legend, the New York Biltmore Hotel.
Pull up your screen to see a nineteen seventeen postcard of what this place used to look like. Designed by Warren and Wetmore, the same architects who shaped Grand Central Terminal, the Biltmore opened on New Year's Eve, nineteen thirteen. It was the glittering crown jewel of Terminal City, a massive commercial development built right over the train tracks. Building this twenty-six-story Italian Renaissance Revival masterpiece, an architectural style meant to echo the grand palaces of fifteenth-century Italy, cost ten million dollars back then. That is roughly three hundred million dollars today. They used four million pieces of common brick and two million pieces of gray brick just for the facade alone!
And the inside? Pure magic. If you tap your app, you can catch a glimpse of a lavish black-tie dinner held there in nineteen fourteen. The Biltmore had one thousand rooms, its own Turkish baths, which were essentially luxurious indoor steam rooms, and even a basement reception space known as the Kissing Room for people greeting arriving train passengers. But the most famous spot was the Palm Court. It had a gorgeous vaulted ceiling, marble walls, and a massive gilded clock. The famous phrase, meet me under the clock, was practically perfected here. Famous writers like F Scott Fitzgerald and J-D Salinger used to meet their editors right under that very timepiece. It was also the unofficial headquarters for the Democratic Party, where politicians hatched deals right inside those swanky Turkish baths.
But all that glamour met a tragic, sudden end in August nineteen eighty-one. Developer Paul Milstein had bought the building. Knowing preservationists were trying to get the Landmarks Preservation Commission, a city agency that protects historic architecture, to step in, Milstein did not wait around. On August fourteenth, he abruptly announced the hotel was closing. That very same day, overnight guests were told to pack up, and demolition crews marched right in. They started ripping down the ornate plasterwork and tearing out the doors while parts of the hotel were literally still open to the public! By the time a judge's restraining order expired a few days later, the beautiful interiors had been completely gutted.
Almost nothing was salvageable. They stripped the grand old hotel down to its steel skeleton and rebuilt it into the office tower you see today. Only the famous lobby clock survived, safely put in storage and later reinstalled in the modern lobby.
It is a slightly heartbreaking piece of New York history, but at least the steel bones of the old Biltmore are still holding this corner up. If you want to peek inside the modern retail spaces, they are open most days from nine or ten in the morning until six in the evening, with a slightly later eleven o'clock start on Tuesdays.
Take a moment to appreciate the surviving history here, and whenever you are ready, our tour rolls on.
