The Martinique New York on Broadway, Curio Collection by Hilton is a 532-room hotel at 53 West 32nd Street (also known as 1260–1266 Broadway) in Manhattan, New York City, United States. It was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh and built by William R. H. Martin, who headed the Rogers Peet business, in a French Renaissance style. The Martinique was developed in three sections between 1897 and 1910. The hotel is a New York City designated landmark, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is part of the Historic Hotels of America.
As completed, the hotel had 600 rooms. The hotel occupies an irregular site with facades along Broadway to the west, 33rd Street to the north, and 32nd Street to the south. On all three sides, the facade is made of glazed brick, terracotta, and limestone, with balconies, cartouches, and sash windows. It is crowned by a large green mansard roof and has decorated dormer windows. Inside the hotel were various ornately decorated public rooms, including a lobby, cafe, and dining rooms at ground level; a grill room in the basement; and ballrooms on the second floor. The modern-day hotel contains two restaurants and some exhibition space.
Martin acquired land for the hotel between 1892 and 1895. The first section of the hotel on 33rd Street opened in 1898 and originally operated as an apartment hotel. The Martinique was expanded twice, in 1901–1903 and 1909–1910. Martin sold the hotel in 1919 to T. Coleman du Pont of the Greeley Square Company. Louis Markel's 56 East 59th Street Corporation acquired the hotel in 1929 and lost it to foreclosure two years later. Frank W. Kridel operated the hotel from 1939 to 1954, when he sold the building to Robert Selby and Eugene Moses. From 1973 until the end of 1988, the Martinique was a welfare hotel housing hundreds of families. The welfare hotel gained a negative reputation across the U.S. and was the setting for Jonathan Kozol's 1988 study, Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America. Developer Harold Thurman leased the building from the owners in 1989, and he reopened it under a Holiday Inn franchise in October 1998. The hotel switched to the Radisson chain in 2005 and joined Hilton's Curio Collection division in 2019. After the Martinique went into foreclosure in 2020, Burnett Equities bought the hotel and reopened it in late 2021.
Site The Martinique New York is on the eastern side of Greeley Square, south of Herald Square, in the Koreatown and Midtown South neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The building has a frontage along Broadway to the west, 33rd Street to the north, and 32nd Street to the south. The hotel was built on lots at West 33rd and 32nd Streets, and also the northeast corner of Broadway and 32nd Street. The irregularly shaped land lot covers , with a frontage of on Broadway and a depth of between 33rd and 34th Streets. The hotel comprises two 17-story structures on Broadway and 32nd Street, as well as a six-story wing on 33rd Street.
The building shares the city block with the Hotel Pierrepont and the Hotel at Fifth Avenue (the former Aberdeen Hotel) to the east. Other nearby structures include the Empire State Building to the northeast, Herald Towers to the north, Macy's Herald Square to the northwest, Manhattan Mall to the west, and the former Grand Hotel and the Hotel Wolcott one block south. There were once several department stores to the west, while there are office and hotel buildings to the east. To the south are other former hotels including the Gilsey House and Grand Hotel. The 12-story, 165-room Hotel Alcazar at one time adjoined the Hotel Martinique on the north side of 34th Street, east of Broadway. The Martinique also wrapped around a 20-story hotel at the southeast corner of Broadway and 33rd Street. 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 hotel, within Greeley Square.
Architecture Henry Janeway Hardenbergh designed the Martinique Hotel in the French Renaissance style. The hotel is variously described as being 16, 17, or 19 stories high. The design "capitalized on the openness of Greeley Square". A 1918 publication stated: "New York is noted for its beautiful buildings, and the Martinique is no exception". The building is a New York City designated landmark and is also part of the Historic Hotels of America. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2025.
The hotel was constructed in three sections. The original building on 33rd Street was erected in 1897–1898, followed by an extension to the middle of the Broadway frontage erected in 1901–1903. The section at the corner of 32nd Street and Broadway, including the entire 32nd Street frontage, was erected in 1909–1910. The original hotel measures wide, while the annex on Broadway measures wide. The 1910 annex's interior is of French Renaissance design, while its exterior uses a mix of French Renaissance and Spanish details. The addition and the older structure are connected with a large courtyard between the two buildings, forming an angle at this point.
Facade The facade is clad with glazed brick, terracotta, and limestone. The 32nd Street elevation of the facade is divided vertically into nine bays, while the Broadway elevation is six bays wide and the 33rd Street elevation is five bays wide. The 32nd Street and 33rd Street elevations are symmetrical, and the Broadway elevation is asymmetrical. The eastern elevation, which faces nearby buildings, is clad with plain brick.
On all three elevations, the articulation consists of three horizontal sections similar to the components of a column (namely a base, shaft, and capital). These sections are separated from each other by a cornice above the fourth story and a string course above the eleventh story. The ground story is clad with rusticated limestone blocks and contains storefronts, while the upper stories are faced in terracotta and brick. The facade also contains aluminum sash windows. When built, the hotel featured "rusticated stonework balconies and prominent cartouches on all three of its facades". The facade is crowned by a two-story, green mansard roof with elaborate dormer windows. There are brick parapets and chimneys above the mansard roof. The chimneys have terracotta caps, and the main chimney on the 33rd Street wing also has a cupola and a cornice of sheet metal. In addition, the eastern part of the roof has a bulkhead or dormer structure for utilities.
32nd Street elevation
The southern elevation on 32nd Street is the building's primary facade and dates to the 1910 expansion. This elevation is laid out symmetrically, and the five central bays are placed within a slightly projecting pavilion. The main entrance is on 32nd Street, through a three-bay-wide marble doorway at the center of the ground level, which is topped by a projecting marquee. A set of transom windows is placed above the main doors. Directly above the marquee is a frieze with the name "Hotel Martinique", as well as an escutcheon on either side of the frieze. The outermost ground-level bays contain windows or doors, which lead to storefronts. By the 2020s, the hotel entrance and one storefront had a cast-iron surround; some of the other storefronts have granite panels below their windows.
The second through fourth stories contain a rusticated stone facade with nine windows on each story. Each of the windows contains an iron railing in front of it. In three of the central pavilion's five bays, the windows on the second and third stories are separated horizontally by decorative spandrel panels and flanked by vertical moldings, and there are broken pediments and crests above the third-story windows. The other two bays of the central pavilion are plainly decorated, and a molded frieze runs above the second-story windows. In the four outermost bays, the second-story windows are topped by geometric lintels, while those on the third story are topped by broken pediments and crests. The window sills on the fourth story are placed directly above the third-story windows' pediments. Above all of the fourth-story windows are voussoirs, which are flanked by brackets that support a balcony on the fifth story. The balcony itself contains a cast-iron balustrade.
The shaft consists of the fifth through eleventh stories and is clad with ivory-colored brick and terracotta, which is rusticated in a manner emulating the limestone below. The fifth-story windows contain volutes above them, and their sills rest atop the fourth-story cornice. The central sixth-story window is ornately decorated with escutcheons (also described as shields) and a pediment. Some of the eighth- and tenth-story windows contain balconettes. A Greek key molding runs above the eleventh story. The rest of the windows contain plain sills and are surrounded by eared terracotta frames.
There are terracotta shells or scallops flanking the windows on the twelfth and thirteenth stories; the bricks on these stories are laid in a diaper pattern. The windows on the thirteenth story contain balconettes and sills with volutes below them. Above the thirteenth-story windows are splayed brick lintels and keystones. Large brackets between the thirteenth-story windows support a balcony on the fourteenth story. The windows on the fourteenth story are plain in design and are topped by a cornice with a stone balcony. The fifteenth story is within the mansard roof and contains projecting dormer windows, which are flanked by volutes and topped by finials. The central dormers have pointed, curved pediments, and there are smaller, rectangular dormers flanking these; in addition, the sixteenth-story windows have segmental-arched dormers. The center section of the mansard contains a square tower, which rises above the roof and supports a water tank. This square tower has segmental-arched dormers on the seventeenth story and oculi on the eighteenth story.
Broadway elevation At the corner of Broadway and 32nd Street is a one-bay-wide chamfered corner, which separates the Broadway and 32nd Street elevations. The three southern bays on Broadway were built as part of the 1910 expansion and are spaced widely, similar to the 32nd Street elevation. The three northern bays, constructed as part of the 1903 expansion, are more narrowly spaced and slightly project from the facade. The ground level contains storefronts and windows.
The rest of the Broadway elevation is designed in a very similar manner to the outer bays of the 32nd Street elevation. On the sixth story, the center window of the northern section is flanked by a pair of escutcheons or shields. The fifteenth-story dormers in the northern three bays have curved pediments. Within the southern three bays, the fifteenth-story dormers have pointed curved or rectangular pediments, while the sixteenth-story dormers are segmentally arched. In addition, the roof is slightly asymmetrical, with a square tower rising from the northern section. At the corner with 32nd Street, there is a copper cartouche at the top of the facade.
33rd Street elevation