The InterContinental New York Barclay Hotel is a hotel at 111 East 48th Street, on Lexington Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The 14-story hotel, operated by IHG Hotels & Resorts, was designed by Cross and Cross in the Colonial style and contains 702 rooms. The Barclay was one of several large hotels developed around Grand Central Terminal as part of Terminal City.
The hotel building contains a facade of brick and limestone, with entrances from all three of the surrounding streets. It is arranged in the shape of the letter "H", with light courts facing north and south. The ground level contains a lobby, storefronts, and restaurant spaces, while the second story contains two ballrooms and other event spaces. Unlike traditional hotels of its time, the Barclay was designed as an apartment hotel and originally lacked large convention spaces or ballrooms. When the hotel opened, it had 842 guestrooms, in addition to bedrooms for maids and servants, but this has been reduced over the years. The top story initially contained a 17-room suite for New York Central Railroad director Harold Stirling Vanderbilt.
The Barclay Hotel opened on November 4, 1926, and was operated by Realty Hotels, a subsidiary of the New York Central Railroad, for more than six decades. The New York Central was superseded in 1968 by Penn Central, which tried to sell the hotel multiple times after going bankrupt in the 1970s. Loews Hotels purchased the hotel in June 1978 and resold it to InterContinental Hotels, which renamed the Barclay as the Inter-Continental New York in 1982 after an extensive renovation. The hotel was renovated again in 1995; it was rebranded the InterContinental, The Barclay New York in 2001 and as the InterContinental New York Barclay in 2009. Constellation Hotel Holdings bought a majority stake in the hotel in 2013, and the hotel underwent another renovation from 2014 to 2016.
Site
The InterContinental Barclay Hotel is at 111 East 48th Street, on the western side of Lexington Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It sits on the eastern portion of a city block bounded by Park Avenue to the west, 48th Street to the south, Lexington Avenue to the east, and 49th Street to the north. The Barclay occupies a rectangular land lot with an area of . The site has a frontage of on Lexington Avenue and on either side street. When the Barclay was built in the 1920s, it adjoined Park Lane, a private driveway, to the west.
The Barclay shares the block with 299 Park Avenue to the west. Along Park Avenue, the buildings at 245 Park Avenue and 277 Park Avenue are directly to the south, while the Waldorf Astoria New York hotel is directly to the north. On Lexington Avenue, the Barclay adjoins the Lexington Hotel NYC to the southeast and the Hotel Shelton to the east. The Barclay was part of "Hotel Row", a collection of hotels developed along Lexington Avenue in the early 20th century. The hotel's address at 111 East 48th Street was intended to relate to the apartment hotels that occupied the adjacent section of Park Avenue during the early 20th century, such as the Park Lane Hotel and Hotel Ambassador.
Architecture The Barclay Hotel was designed by Cross & Cross. The hotel is high with 14 stories. To distinguish the hotel from others in the area, Cross and Cross designed the Barclay in the Colonial style. The designer R. T. Haines Halsey oversaw the interior design along with Mrs. Charles Sabin, who headed the hotel's interior advisory committee. Halsey and Sabin both contributed some of their own artwork to the hotel's design collection.
Form and facade The hotel building is arranged in the shape of the letter "H", with light courts facing north and south, allowing the ground-story spaces to be illuminated by skylights. The lower stories of the facade are clad in limestone, with carvings of sea creatures and shells at the base. The main entrance on 48th Street was composed of a loggia with three arches, a set of bronze doors, and a marble frame. There were secondary entrances on Lexington Avenue and 49th Street, which led to the guestroom elevators. The rest of the hotel's facade was designed in the Italian Renaissance style and was made of light-colored brick, interspersed with architectural terracotta trim. The facade is topped by a cornice with heavy denticulation.
Public rooms
Ground floor As designed, the lobby and lounge was a square space accessed directly from the 48th Street entrance. The lobby floor was made of Bardiglio marble with a black-and-gold border, while the wainscoting was made of verde antique marble. The lobby also contains a carved plaster frieze on the walls. Two marble columns in the lobby supported a ceiling with a Tiffany glass skylight, directly below the southern light court. The skylight was made of amber glass and contained ironwork with arrow and star motifs. The lobby was further decorated with American colonial-style symbols against a blue background. A bird cage was installed at the center of the lobby in 1945. Following the 1980s renovation, the Barclay's lobby was decorated with wood paneling and contained chandeliers suspended from a lofty ceiling. The space also contained couches and a replica bird cage at its center. The cage was ultimately removed altogether in 1995, and a green-marble entrance vestibule near the main entrance was constructed at that time. When the hotel was renovated in 2016, a grand staircase of Carrara marble was built within the lobby.
On the eastern portion of the ground level were six storefronts facing Lexington Avenue. A corridor led west from Lexington Avenue to an elevator hall, separating the two storefronts to the north from the four storefronts to the south. Just west of the storefronts, another corridor led from 49th Street to the main lobby, providing access both to the two northernmost storefronts and the elevator lobby. The four southern storefronts could also be accessed from the lobby. There were six passenger elevators, three on either side of the elevator lobby. In addition, there were two freight elevators, which traveled to service lobbies on each guestroom story. A set of six dumbwaiters connected with the ground-level kitchen and with service pantries on each guestroom story.
The ground level had two dining rooms. The main dining room was placed at the southwestern corner of the ground level; it could be accessed from a separate vestibule from 48th Street. This dining room could fit 300 people and was designed in a manner reminiscent of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate. It contained oak paneling with replicas of pieces by Duncan Phyfe. A lounge called the Barclay Terrace extended off the western end of the lobby; it was originally used for serving tea. In addition, there was a kitchen at the northwestern corner. As part of a 1995 renovation, a bar was installed behind the Barclay Terrace. A small private dining room, fitting 24 people, was constructed next to the bar. During 2016, a bar called the Gin Parlour was created within the lobby, as well as the Club InterContinental lounge.
Second and third floors Unlike traditional hotels of its time, the Barclay was designed as an apartment hotel and originally lacked large convention spaces or ballrooms. The second floor contained three private dining rooms, including two dining suites. One of the dining suites evoked the Baltimore Room in the Met Fifth Avenue's American wing and could be reached by a private entrance. There was also a children's dining room and various apartments for tenants' servants. In the 1980s, a wine cellar was constructed on the second floor, occupying a former telephone room on that level; the cellar could not be placed below ground level due to the presence of Grand Central Terminal's underground railroad tracks. During a 2016 renovation, two ballrooms were built within the light courts on the second story, which formerly contained technical equipment. The Grand Ballroom was placed above the lobby and covered , while the Empire Ballroom covered . Both of these spaces contain architectural details such as chandeliers suspended from coffered ceilings.
The third story was a clubhouse for the Cornell Club of New York from 1939 to 1961, with a bar, library, dining room, and women's lounge. The Cornell Club space, covering , had a private entrance and an elevator. Public rooms were added to the third story in the 1980s, with separate rooms for business meetings and social events. By 2016, the hotel had of event space, including nine meeting rooms.
Guestrooms When the hotel opened, it had 842 guestrooms, in addition to bedrooms for maids and servants; a 1932 guide cited the hotel as having 850 rooms. Each story had 69 rooms, and guests could rent either furnished or unfurnished rooms. The corridors originally contained wallpaper, decorated with an old print that depicted New York City in 1720. The guestrooms themselves contained up to three bedrooms, which could be rearranged as needed. All bedrooms had their own bathrooms, and each guestroom had a small pantry and a small private foyer. The bathrooms, foyers, and in-room pantries were placed between the guestrooms and the corridors. Many rooms on the four upper stories contained fireplaces. Each story also had its own service pantry shared by all occupants of that story, with kitchen appliances such as cabinets, refrigerators, and sinks.
Following a renovation in the late 1990s, the hotel had 680 rooms, including 80 suites. The guestrooms included small standard suites; mid-sized deluxe suites; and large junior and one-bedroom suites. The guestrooms were decorated in two color schemes and contained hardwood floors, beamed ceilings, and crown moldings; the larger suites contained fireplaces and sitting areas. Following a renovation in 2016, the hotel contained 704 units. The Barclay was reduced to 26 suites because some of the other suites had been subdivided; the largest suites were the Presidential Suite, as well as the Penthouse Sky Suite, the latter of which included an outdoor terrace spanning . During the 2016 renovation, the hotel's operators added soundproofing between the different guestrooms, and they constructed larger bathrooms with walk-in showers in each guestroom. The rooms were also designed with motifs from the original hotel; these details even extended to the door handle plates, which contained eagle medallions.
New York Central Railroad director Harold Stirling Vanderbilt originally had a 17-room suite on the top floor. The suite was decorated in the French Renaissance style and contained imported French oak paneling in several rooms including the drawing room, dining room, library, and several bedrooms. Vanderbilt's suite also included an onyx-and-marble stairway, as well as a gymnasium and squash court on the roof. By 1942, Vanderbilt's suite had been converted to a clubhouse.
History In the 19th century, New York Central Railroad lines north of Grand Central Depot in Midtown Manhattan were served exclusively by steam locomotives, and the rising traffic soon caused accumulations of smoke and soot in the Park Avenue Tunnel, the only approach to the depot. After a fatal crash in 1902, the New York state legislature passed a law to ban all steam trains in Manhattan by 1908. The New York Central's vice president William J. Wilgus proposed electrifying the line and building a new electric-train terminal underground, a plan that was implemented almost in its entirety. The old Grand Central Depot was torn down in phases and replaced by the current Grand Central Terminal. Construction on Grand Central Terminal started in 1903, and the new terminal was opened on February 2, 1913. Passenger traffic on the commuter lines into Grand Central more than doubled in the years following the terminal's completion.