The Astor House was a fine hotel in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, that opened in 1836 and soon became the most famous hotel in America.

History

The Astor House was originally built by John Jacob Astor

John Jacob Astor

John Jacob Astor , born Johann Jakob Astor, was a German-American business magnate and investor who was the first prominent member of the Astor family and the first multi-millionaire in the United States...

, who assembled the building lots around his former house until he had purchased the full block in the heart of the city's most fashionable residential district. The hotel opened in June 1836 as the Park Hotel. It was located on the west side of Broadway

Broadway (New York City)

Broadway is a prominent avenue in New York City, United States, which runs through the full length of the borough of Manhattan and continues northward through the Bronx borough before terminating in Westchester County, New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to...

 between Vesey and Barclay Streets, across from New York City Hall

New York City Hall

New York City Hall is located at the center of City Hall Park in the Civic Center area of Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA, between Broadway, Park Row, and Chambers Street. The building is the oldest City Hall in the United States that still houses its original governmental functions, such as...

 Park and diagonally across from the offices of the New York Herald

New York Herald

The New York Herald was a large distribution newspaper based in New York City that existed between May 6, 1835, and 1924.-History:The first issue of the paper was published by James Gordon Bennett, Sr., on May 6, 1835. By 1845 it was the most popular and profitable daily newspaper in the UnitedStates...

. The building was designed by Isaiah Rogers

Isaiah Rogers

Isaiah Rogers was a US architect who practiced in Mobile, Alabama, Boston, Massachusetts, New York City, and Cincinnati, Ohio.-Background:...

, who had designed the first luxury hotel in the United States, the Tremont House, in Boston (1829). The large four-square block was detailed in the Greek Revival style, faced with pale granite ashlar

Ashlar

Ashlar is prepared stone work of any type of stone. Masonry using such stones laid in parallel courses is known as ashlar masonry, whereas masonry using irregularly shaped stones is known as rubble masonry. Ashlar blocks are rectangular cuboid blocks that are masonry sculpted to have square edges...

 with quoin

Quoin (architecture)

Quoins are the cornerstones of brick or stone walls. Quoins may be either structural or decorative. Architects and builders use quoins to give the impression of strength and firmness to the outline of a building...

ed corners treated as at Tremont House, as embedded Doric pillars, and a central entrance flanked by Greek Doric columns supporting a short length of entablature. Astor House contained 309 rooms in its 6 stories with the new gaslights and bathing/toilet facilities on each floor. Its tree-shaded central courtyard was covered over in 1852 by the elliptical vaulted cast-iron and glass "rotunda" by James Bogardus

James Bogardus

James Bogardus was an American inventor and architect, the pioneer of American cast-iron architecture, for which he took out a patent in 1850...

, that under the direction of its proprietor "Col." Charles A. Stetson (1837-1877) was the city's most stylish luncheon place for gentlemen at its curving bar, with legendary side dining rooms entered from Vesey Street or Barclay Street, where even upper-class New Yorkers discovered that it was possible to dine stylishly in public.

Mathew Brady

Mathew Brady

Mathew B. Brady was one of the most celebrated 19th century American photographers, best known for his portraits of celebrities and his documentation of the American Civil War...

 lived there in the 1840s and William James

William James

William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...

 was born there in 1842. In 1843, the Astor House hosted the recently-married Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...

 and his wife. The couple, who renewed their friendship with fellow patron Fanny Kemble

Fanny Kemble

Frances Anne Kemble , was a famous British actress and author in the early and mid nineteenth century.-Youth and acting career:...

, also dined there with Nathaniel Parker Willis

Nathaniel Parker Willis

Nathaniel Parker Willis , also known as N. P. Willis, was an American author, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. For a time, he was the employer of former...

 and his wife during their stay.
The Norwegian violinist Ole Bull

Ole Bull

Ole Bornemann Bull was a Norwegian violinist and composer.-Background:Bull was born in Bergen. He was the eldest of ten children of Johan Storm Bull and Anna Dorothea Borse Geelmuyden . His brother, Georg Andreas Bull became a noted Norwegian architect...

 was a returning patron at the hotel on his American tours in the 1840s, 50s and 60s. Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

 stayed there in February 1860. It was used as a safe haven during the Great Blizzard of 1888

Great Blizzard of 1888

The Great Blizzard of 1888 or Great Blizzard of '88 was one of the most severe blizzards in United States' recorded history. Snowfalls of 40-50 inches fell in parts of New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and sustained winds of over produced snowdrifts in excess of...

 and in 1916, Charles Evans Hughes

Charles Evans Hughes

Charles Evans Hughes, Sr. was an American statesman, lawyer and Republican politician from New York. He served as the 36th Governor of New York , Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States , United States Secretary of State , a judge on the Court of International Justice , and...

 stayed there while his presidential bid stood in the balance. American Civil War Confederate Admiral Raphael Semmes

Raphael Semmes

For other uses, see Semmes .Raphael Semmes was an officer in the United States Navy from 1826 - 1860 and the Confederate States Navy from 1860 - 1865. During the American Civil War he was captain of the famous commerce raider CSS Alabama, taking a record sixty-nine prizes...

 stayed at Astor House twice. First, in March of 1861, on the eve of the war when he was searching for ships to buy for the fledgling Confederate Navy (he found none). Nearly five years later, on December 27, 1865, he again spent the night, this time as a prisoner of the North, while being escorted to The Washington Navy Yard where Federal authorities would decide whether to put him on trial.

The success of the Astor House invited competition. The St Nicholas Hotel on Broadway at Broome Street was built for a million dollars and offered the innovation of central heating that circulated warmed air through registers to every room. The Metropolitan Hotel

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...

 opened in 1852 just north of it, at Prince Street, was equally luxurious. But the new hotel to put all others in the shade was the Fifth Avenue Hotel

Fifth Avenue Hotel

The Fifth Avenue Hotel was a former luxury hotel located at 200 Fifth Avenue in New York City, New York from 1859 to 1908. It occupied the full Fifth Avenue frontage between 23rd Street and 24th Street, at the southwest corner of Madison Square in the borough of Manhattan.- Site and construction...

 facing Madison Square. By the early 1870s the Astor House was considered old-fashioned and unappealing and principally used by businessmen, but it remained such a seeming permanent fixture of New York, that schadenfreude

Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. This German word is used as a loanword in English and some other languages, and has been calqued in Danish and Norwegian as skadefryd and Swedish as skadeglädje....

was evoked in readers of a fantasy short story by J.A. Mitchell, "The Last American", set in the far future, when Persian explorers in the ruins of New York come upon "an upturned slab" inscribed ASTOR HOUSE: "I pointed it out to Nofuhl and we bent over it with eager eyes...'The inscription is Old English,' he said. '"House" signified a dwelling, but the word "Astor" I know not. It was probably the name of a deity, and here was his temple'". The south section was demolished in 1913, victim of subway construction, and Bogardus' luncheon pavilion went with it. Vincent Astor

Vincent Astor

William Vincent Astor was a businessman and philanthropist and a member of the prominent Astor family.-Early life:...

 redeveloped the site at 217 Broadway as the "Astor Office Building", a modest seven stories tall, in 1915.The rest was demolished in 1926 and the site rebuilt as the Transportation Building, with Art Deco

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

 details, York and Sawyer

York and Sawyer

The architectural firm of York and Sawyer produced many outstanding structures, exemplary of Beaux-Arts architecture as it was practiced in the United States. The partners Edward York and Philip Sawyer had both trained in the office of McKim, Mead, and White...

, architects, 1927.

The reputation of the hotel produced other "Astor House" establishments as far afield as Shanghai

Shanghai

Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...

, where the first foreigners' hotel, Richard's, erected in 1846, is currently known as the Astor House Hotel.