Herald Towers, formerly the Hotel McAlpin, is a residential condominium building on Herald Square, along Broadway between 33rd and 34th Streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Constructed from 1910 to 1912 by the Greeley Square Hotel Company, it operated as a short-term hotel until 1976. The building was designed by Frank Mills Andrews in the Italian Renaissance style and was the largest hotel in the world at the time of its completion, with 1,500 guestrooms. The hotel was expanded in 1917, when Warren and Wetmore designed an annex with 200 rooms.
The building is high and has 25 above-ground stories and four basement levels. It is divided into three wings facing Broadway and Sixth Avenue and is largely clad in brick, limestone, and terracotta. The hotel building contains of structural steel as well as an extensive system of mechanical equipment. Originally, the hotel included a triple-height lobby clad in marble and stone, as well as various public rooms in the Renaissance and Louis XVI styles. In the hotel's basement was the Marine Grill, which could fit 250 people. On the upper stories, two floors were set aside for men and women. The top floor had men's baths and a ballroom. In the late 1970s, the hotel was converted into about 690 apartments.
The Greeley Square Hotel Company operated the hotel for two decades and refurbished it in 1928. The hotel was sold in 1936 and refurbished the following year; the New York Life Insurance Company then resold the McAlpin to Joseph Levy in 1945. The hotel was managed by the Knott hotel chain from 1938 to 1952, when the Tisch Organization took over operation. Levy sold the hotel to Sheraton Hotels in 1954 and it was renamed the Sheraton-McAlpin. Following a renovation in 1959, the hotel became the Sheraton-Atlantic Hotel in 1959. Sol Goldman and Alexander DiLorenzo bought the hotel in 1968, restoring the hotel's original name. Sheraton reacquired the hotel in 1976 and resold it to developer William Zeckendorf Jr., who converted the McAlpin to 700 rental apartments. The building reopened in 1980 as the McAlpin House. The McAlpin was renamed Herald Towers in 1999 and was converted to condominiums in the 2000s.
Site Herald Towers is on the east side of Herald Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, with addresses at 1300 Broadway and 50 West 34th Street. The building has frontage along Sixth Avenue to the northwest, Broadway to the west, 34th Street to the north, and 33rd Street to the south. Its land lot covers , with a frontage of on 34th Street and a depth of between 33rd and 34th Streets. Because Broadway runs diagonally to the Manhattan street grid, the land lot is pentagonal, with the western facade on Broadway running at an irregular angle. The site initially measured long on 33rd Street and long on 34th Street.
The building shares the city block with the Empire State Building to the east. Other nearby structures include the Marbridge Building to the north, Macy's Herald Square to the northwest, Manhattan Mall to the southwest, and the Martinique New York and Hotel Pierrepont to the south. An entrance to the New York City Subway's 34th Street–Herald Square station and to the PATH system's adjacent 33rd Street station is directly outside the building. When the 34th Street station opened, it had two entrances just outside the Hotel McAlpin.
Architecture Herald Towers was designed by architect Frank Mills Andrews, who was also president of the Greeley Square Hotel Company, the hotel's developer. It was designed in the Italian Renaissance style. Between 1915 and 1917, the hotel was expanded east to designs by Warren and Wetmore. The hotel's original owners cited the McAlpin as being 26 stories tall, although other sources gave a height of 25 stories. The roof is above the curb. The hotel also had four basement levels, three of which were full stories; these extended below ground.
The building is divided into three wings facing Broadway and Sixth Avenue, with light courts between each wing. The base is clad with Bedford limestone, while the main shaft of the building contains a facade of orange brick. There were originally iron and terracotta balconies in front of many of the windows. The top stories contain a facade of orange brick and terracotta, with intricate decorations. There are multi-story arched openings on the top several stories, above which are a terracotta cornice and attic. Fiske and Company Inc. manufactured most of the brick, while Michael Cohen and Co. made the limestone.
Mechanical features The building uses of structural steel. The foundations consist of concrete footings, built atop a layer of solid rock. Some of the columns in the superstructure are placed extremely close to the lot line, so girders are used to distribute the weight of the columns across multiple footers. The columns at the building's corners are placed atop cantilevered girders. At the end of each wing is an enclosed emergency stair that runs the full height of the building. Stairways were also placed next to the service elevators along 33rd Street, as well as next to the public elevators at the core of the building. As a fireproofing measure, the hotel's doors and trim were all made of hollow steel, and each floor contained five standpipes.
The first basement level connected to the New York City Subway at 34th Street–Herald Square and to the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad's Uptown Hudson Tubes (now PATH) at 33rd Street. There were also a ratskeller (later the Marine Grill), kitchen, servants' rooms, service entrance, and receiving room on the first basement level. The other basement levels included stewards' departments, mechanical equipment, and an in-house laundry. There was also a wine cellar, as well as humidors for cigars.
The hotel's sub-basement contained power generators with a capacity of , as well as two icemakers that could create up to 10 tons of ice per day. The hotel had 13 elevators, which traveled at and could carry up to 20 people each, as well as three sidewalk lifts. The hotel's mechanical system included of heating ducts, of electric wires, and of tubes. When the hotel was under construction in 1911, one source described its telephone switchboard equipment as the largest in any hotel. There were three switchboards with 100 trunk lines and 1,800 stations, which could accommodate 500,000 calls per day at the time of the McAlpin's opening. In addition, the hotel contained 16 telautograph machines. Servants communicated using a telephone system with 17 stations.
Public rooms
When the hotel was built, the Real Estate Record and Guide wrote that the design of the base "marks a distinct departure from the established New York type of hostelry", in that the dining rooms and restaurants were placed one story above ground level. This allowed the hotel's proprietors to maximize its retail space by placing shops on three sides of the ground level, while also retaining sufficient space on the ground story for a large lobby.
Ground level The ground story was largely devoted to retail. The main entrance was from 34th Street; there was a women's reception room to the left (east) of the main entrance. The main lobby, a three-story space, was clad in marble and Caen stone and was designed in the Italian Renaissance style. It measured wide and tall. The space could be accessed from Broadway, 33rd Street, and 34th Street. The reception desk was made of marble, and near the reception desk was a maids' signal board, which showed whether a certain room was being cleaned. The western side of the lobby contained a bronze railing, behind which were the cashier, room clerk, key clerk, information desk, and other departments. The lobby also had leather seats, marble pedestals, vases, and other decorations. The lobby's ceiling contained three red-and-gold chandeliers. The lobby was surrounded by sixteen marble columns, twelve of which were light-golden veined Famosa and four of which were light Bongard. The columns formed an arcade of arches, the tops of which contained lunettes with eight murals by T. Gilbert White.
West of the central lobby, facing Broadway, was a men's restaurant designed in a 15th-century Italian Gothic style. The men's restaurant had a low vaulted ceiling and was sparsely decorated. The walls were wainscoted with square and rhombus-shaped wooden panels. The cornice contained a gilded frieze made of carved wood; the frieze contained the coats of arms of various 15th-century Italian families. The columns in the men's restaurant contained niches with carved wooden figures, which represented 15th- and 16th-century Italian decorations.
Upper stories A gallery surrounded the lobby at mezzanine level, which was above ground. The mezzanine level contained a "tapestry gallery" decorated with tapestries by Albert Herter. The tapestries, which were colored blue and ocher, varied in size from to . They were disassembled in the 1930s and reinstalled at the Armenian Sisters Academy in Radnor, Pennsylvania, during the 1970s. Corridors surrounded the lobby on both the first story and the mezzanine level. The ceilings of each corridor contained gold decorations with red and blue accents.
The dining room, banquet room, women's restaurant, reception room, writing room, and library were on the mezzanine level. The dining room measured across and high and was designed in the French Renaissance style. The dining room included gilded decorations, mirrored panels, and damask tapestries on its walls; cream-and-gold decorations on the ceiling; and crystal chandeliers. On Broadway was a banquet hall with a vaulted ceiling, measuring across. The banquet hall was decorated in green and gold, and it contained murals on its ceiling. The south side of the hotel contained a women's tea room and restaurant, measuring , and a women's reception room, measuring . These two rooms were colored gray and blue. The women's restaurant, an irregularly shaped space at the southeast corner of the mezzanine, was decorated with blue tapestries and carved capitals. There was also a library measuring on the east side of the mezzanine. These rooms were designed in the Renaissance style, except the women's rooms, which were in the Louis XVI style.
The second floor included a men's lounge and private dining rooms. The men's lounge measured . During the mid-1910s expansion, a children's play area was added to the sixth floor. The hotel had a medical clinic on its 23rd story. The top floor had men's baths and a ballroom. The baths included a Victorian-style Turkish bath, a Russian bath, an outdoor lounge, and a swimming pool made of enameled brick. Fifty additional dressing rooms were added next to the Turkish bath in the 1910s. The ballroom, designed in a Renaissance style, measured across and high. By 1970, the upper stories contained an off-Broadway theater, the McAlpin Roof Theater.
Marine Grill
In the hotel's basement was the Marine Grill, which could fit 250 people. The Marine Grill, also known as the ratskeller, was designed in the Spanish Renaissance style with arched niches and ceiling vaults. According to a promotional booklet for the hotel, the space was decorated with "beautifully colored, glazed terra-cotta tiles, [which have] made it really unique and one of New York's most talked about novelties." The Marine Grill was illuminated by recessed lighting on the ceiling and lamps on the tables.