The Knickerbocker Hotel is a hotel at Times Square, on the southeastern corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. Built by John Jacob Astor IV, the hostelry was designed in 1901 and opened in 1906. Its location near the Theater District around Times Square was intended to attract not only residential guests but also theater visitors.
The hotel is designed largely in the Beaux-Arts style by Marvin & Davis, with Bruce Price as consultant. Its primary frontages are on Broadway and 42nd Street. These facades are constructed of red brick with terracotta details and a prominent mansard roof. The Knickerbocker Hotel also incorporates an annex on 41st Street, built in 1894 as part of the St. Cloud Hotel, which formerly occupied the site. The 41st Street facade contains a Romanesque Revival designed by Philip C. Brown. The hotel contains 300 rooms, a restaurant, a coffee shop, and a roof bar. The original interior design was devised in 1905 by Trowbridge & Livingston, scattered remnants of which include an entrance that formerly led from the New York City Subway's Times Square station to the hotel's basement.
The original hotel housed Enrico Caruso and George M. Cohan until it was shuttered in 1920 due to a decrease in business. The building was then converted to offices, becoming the Knickerbocker Building; it was the home of Newsweek magazine from 1940 to 1959 during which it was called the Newsweek Building. After major renovations in 1980, it became known as 1466 Broadway and was used as garment showrooms and offices. Following another renovation in 2001, it was known as 6 Times Square. The Knickerbocker was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and was designated a New York City Landmark in 1988. It was converted back to a hotel from 2013 to 2015 under its original name.
Site The Knickerbocker Hotel is on the southeastern corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, at the south end of Times Square, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. It contains the alternate addresses 1462–1470 Broadway, 6 Times Square, and 142 West 42nd Street, with a small annex extending south to 143 West 41st Street. The building occupies a land lot covering , with frontages of about on Broadway to the west and about on 42nd Street to the north. The frontage on 41st Street is only wide.
The Knickerbocker Hotel wraps around 8 Times Square at the corner of Broadway and 41st Street. The site is adjacent to 5 Times Square and Times Square Tower to the west, One Times Square to the northwest, 4 Times Square to the north, the Bank of America Tower and Stephen Sondheim Theatre to the northeast, and the Bush Tower to the east. An entrance to the New York City Subway's Times Square–42nd Street station, served by the , is immediately outside the hotel; a direct entrance originally led from the basement (see ).
Previous use John Jacob Astor and William Cutting bought a large tract of land in modern-day Times Square from Metcef Eden in 1803. The land comprised much of the modern-day West Side of Manhattan between 41st and 48th streets; Astor obtained the eastern half of that land, which included Broadway. By the late 19th century, the Knickerbocker's site was occupied by the Hotel St. Cloud, which opened in 1868 at Broadway and 42nd Street. At the time, it was relatively far from the developed portions of Manhattan. Grand Central Depot, predecessor of Grand Central Terminal, was developed nearby in 1871, resulting in the growth of the surrounding neighborhood.
Members of the Astor family decided to divide the Astor land within Times Square in 1890, at which point the area contained many small buildings, which sat on land leased from the Astors. In 1892, John Jacob Astor IV acquired the lease of the Hotel St. Cloud for $850,000. With transit improvements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, New York City's theater district relocated from further south in Manhattan to modern-day Times Square. The construction of theaters led to the development of other entertainment facilities such as hotels, dance halls, and restaurants. Furthermore, the Knickerbocker site was adjacent to the city's first subway line, providing access from the rest of the city.
Architecture The Knickerbocker Hotel, completed in 1906, was designed by Marvin & Davis with consulting architect Bruce Price.; ; The structure was largely designed in the Beaux-Arts style. The annex on 143 West 41st Street, which was built in 1894 as an addition to the Hotel St. Cloud, contains a Romanesque Revival facade designed by Philip C. Brown. The 41st Street annex was intentionally incorporated into the current hotel building. The interiors were designed by Trowbridge & Livingston. The hotel measures tall.
Facade
Broadway and 42nd Street
The Knickerbocker Hotel's Broadway and 42nd Street facades are articulated into three horizontal sections: a two-story base, a ten-story shaft, and a three-story mansard roof. The ground and second stories serve as a commercial base and have seen numerous design changes since 1920. The vertical limestone piers are the only portions of the original design that remain at the base. Originally, a ground-level portico projected from the center seven bays of the 42nd Street facade, with seven round arches topped by a balustrade. This portico was removed by 1911. There was a similar portico at the center five bays on Broadway, which was flush with the rest of the facade. The second floor contained round-arched windows. The Broadway facade originally contained a secondary entrance to the cafe.
On the third through twelfth floors, the building is clad in red brick with decorative elements made of Indiana Limestone and terracotta. Some of the limestone and terracotta ornamentation has been replaced with similar-looking concrete. Along 42nd Street, the outermost four bays are grouped into slightly projecting "corner pavilions", flanking the center seven bays. The two center bays on each corner pavilion are paired. The Broadway facade is nine bays wide and lacks projecting corner pavilions. Each window is flanked by stone quoins. The fourth, sixth, seventh, and eleventh-story windows contain either decorative iron balcony rails or stone balustrades. The pediments atop windows on each story are variously made of segmental arches, sculptured decorations, or swans' necks.;
A small cornice runs above the fourth story, while more substantial cornices run above the ninth and eleventh stories. At Broadway, the center bay contains an arched pediment above the fourth-story window that interrupts the cornice above it.; The ninth story cornice is supported by decorative brackets while the eleventh story cornice is supported by modillions. All three cornices have lost some of their original decorative elements.;
The thirteenth through fifteenth stories are part of the mansard roof, which is clad in green copper and is steeply sloped. There are also urns at the corners of the roof. Originally, the dormer windows from the mansard roof contained elaborate pediments, although these were likely removed by 1920. The thirteenth floor windows' pediments were either triangular or segmentally arched. The fourteenth floor windows' pediments were round-arched. A penthouse on the fifteenth floor was added between 1908 and 1910 to designs by C. H. Cullen.
41st Street
The 41st Street facade of the Knickerbocker Hotel is eight stories tall and is designed in the Romanesque Revival style, with some ornament in the Beaux-Arts style. The facade is made of buff brick and terracotta. It was intended as a service entrance to the main Knickerbocker Hotel.
The annex previously contained a second story with three bays of windows, above which runs a classical-style cornice. When the Knickerbocker was re-converted back into a hotel in the 2010s, the double-height first story was altered for a service entrance that takes up the entire width of the 41st Street facade. The third floor was skipped. The fourth and fifth stories are topped by an arch that spans the entire width of the annex. The sixth through eighth stories are flanked by pilasters, with two bays each on the sixth and seventh stories and three bays on the eighth stories. The attic, on the ninth story, was constructed in 1906 and contains two dormer windows with triangular copper pediments.
Features
The modern Knickerbocker Hotel contains 330 guestrooms. 27 of the rooms are advertised as junior suites, while four are labeled as signature suites. Hotel dining includes the Charlie Palmer Steak IV restaurant; Jake's coffee shop; The Martini Lounge; and a sushi bar, Akoya, inside its St. Cloud rooftop bar overlooking Times Square. The hotel's total interior space is about .
The first Hotel Knickerbocker originally had 556 guestrooms, 400 of which contained baths. The Knickerbocker was described in Architects and Builders Magazine as having "magnificent equipment and excellent service". The Knickerbocker's various artworks were a prominent part of the original interior design, having been installed as a way to enhance the interior character at a relatively low cost. A critic for the Architectural Record praised the interior design, saying: "There are few hotels in the country in the appearance of which such uniform good taste has been displayed", although the same critic took issue with the interior layout. Connecting the various floors were four passenger elevators and four freight and service elevators. The original hotel had five hundred clocks, which were made in Paris and maintained by an employee who was specifically tasked with winding them each day. The modern hotel has only 330 rooms.
During much of the 20th century, the hotel interiors were used as office space, but by 2015 these stories had been converted back to hotel suites. Little evidence remains of the original design. On the upper stories, the only remnants of the original design were radiators and terrazzo floors.; The 2015 hotel renovation redesigned the interiors in a modernist style.
Basements
Below the lobby is a basement and subbasement, which retain their wall paneling, herringbone-patterned floors, and hexagonal white tile decorations. The basement had a grillroom, bar, broker's office, barber and manicure parlors, and the kitchen. The grillroom contained an English design with plain oak walls and a Gothic oak ceiling. Displayed in the basement bar was a Frederic Remington painting entitled "The United States Cavalry Charge",; interspersed with mirrored wall panels and gold-colored hangings. The kitchen had refrigerating plants, heating plants, and glass and silver chests, accessed by four dumbwaiters from the kitchen. The ice machines could make up to of ice daily, and a pneumatic cleaning system served the whole hotel.
The subbasement contained the mechanical plant with boilers, coal storage bins, electrical generators, water filters, an ice-making plant, and an engine room. The wine vault, cigar vault, baggage room, and laundry facility were also in the subbasement.