Look to your right at this towering eighteen-story limestone building, easily spotted by its elegantly curved corner, deep horizontal grooves across its lower base, and the ornate carved stone garlands draping down its sides. This is the St. Regis New York, an absolute masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style, which is a grand, heavily ornamented French architectural tradition. Over a century separates the views of this enduring elegance standing tall as the surrounding cityscape transformed from horse-drawn carriages to modern traffic, so tap the before and after image in your app to take a look. John Jacob Astor the Fourth opened this place in nineteen oh four. Now, Astor had two huge motivations here. First, he desperately wanted to outshine his cousin, who had just built the rival Waldorf-Astoria. Second, Astor needed a sanctuary. He had just outraged New York high society by divorcing his first wife and marrying a nineteen-year-old, so he figured he would just build his own private clubhouse to escape the glaring eyes of the elite.
His wealthy neighbors were absolutely furious. Oil tycoon William Rockefeller led the charge, branding the towering hotel a social crime that would bring unpredictable strangers into their exclusive enclave. Rockefeller and his millionaire buddies even planted bizarre rumors in the newspapers to scare away potential guests. They claimed the hotel charged visitors by the foot for filtered air, and that a simple chocolate eclair would cost five hundred dollars, which is about seventeen thousand dollars today. The smear campaign got so bad that the hotel manager had to issue public denials.
But Astor had the last laugh, filling the hotel with mind-blowing technology for the era. He installed an incredible central vacuum system where maids simply plugged flexible hoses into wall sockets that whisked dust directly down to the basement.
He also commissioned artist Maxfield Parrish to paint the famous Old King Cole mural for the bar, paying him five thousand dollars, roughly one hundred and seventy thousand dollars today. Parrish actually hated Astor's demanding attitude, so he took a subtle, hilarious revenge. If you ask the bartenders today, they will tell you that the smirking courtiers in the painting are reacting because Parrish secretly painted the King in a state of flatulence.
Tragically, Astor died on the Titanic in nineteen twelve, though survivors remembered him calmly smoking a cigar and heading down to free his dog, Kitty, before the ship sank.
His beloved hotel lived on to host a wildly colorful cast of characters. In the nineteen sixties and seventies, the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí lived here every winter. Dalí would casually walk his pet ocelot down the marble corridors on a leash. He even found a genius way to avoid paying his massive room service tabs. He would pay with personal checks that he had embellished with original sketches, knowing full well the management would rather frame his artwork than cash the checks.
Meanwhile, director Alfred Hitchcock maintained a favorite suite where he once devoured three full steaks and three portions of ice cream in a single sitting. And in nineteen seventy-one, John Lennon hunkered down on the seventeenth floor, happily sitting on the carpet to sort a massive delivery of Elvis Presley records, and practicing on a typewriter by repeatedly typing the phrase, I am a pimp.
From feuding millionaires to surrealists with wild cats, the walls of the St. Regis hold some of the best gossip in the city. Enjoy the lavish details of the facade before we move on to our next destination.
