Metropolitan Hotel (New York City)

The Metropolitan Hotel in New York City was a Manhattan hotel opened September 1, 1852 and demolished in 1895.

It occupied a three-hundred-foot brownstone-faced frontage of four floors above fashionable shopfronts occupying a full city block on Broadway and two hundred feet on Prince Street. The site, formerly that of Niblo's Garden,^[1] was owned by Stephen Van Rensselaer, and the architects were Joseph Trench and John Butler Snook, who designed the hotel in the "grand commercialized style reminiscent of Roman palazzos,"^[2] with many of its furnishings imported from Europe, including the largest plate-glass mirrors in the United States: the interior decorations and furnishings were claimed in 1866 to have cost $200,000.^[3] It could shelter six hundred guests, in steam-heated rooms and in "family apartments" with private drawing rooms.^[4] The Metropolitan, operated on the "American plan" that included three meals a day, was owned by the Leland brothers, organizers of the first American hotel chain.^[5] After 1871, the hotel was for a time managed by Richard Tweed, son of the infamous William M. Tweed ("Boss Tweed"), who became the hotel's proprietor.

The Metropolitan Hotel closed and was demolished in 1895.

References

1. ^ Beneath it was the entrance to Niblo's Garden, in its final phase as a theater. (Miller's New York as it is, or Stranger's guide-book to the cities of New York... 1866:63.)
2. ^ Jan Seidler Ramirez, Michele Helene Bogart and William R. Taylor, Painting the Town: cityscapes of New York: paintings from the Museum of the City of New York (2000:116),.
3. ^ Miller's New York as it is, or Stranger's guide-book to the cities of New York... 1866:67.
4. ^ Lloyd R. Morris, Incredible New York 1975:5.
5. ^ Simeon Leland built a residence "Leland Castle" in New Rochelle, New York.

• Metropolitan Hotel at the Museum of the City of New York