The Empire Hotel (New York City, New York)

 hotel, movie / film / TV location

155-foot, 14-story Neo-Classical hotel completed in 1923. Designed by Frederic I. Merrick for Herbert DuPuy, it opened with an iconic red neon sign reading "Hotel Empire" on the rooftop that still exists today. The building has two light wells at the south side that give it an E-shape, with one wing angled along Broadway.

It is clad in red brick above a 3-story limestone base. The ground floor is painted and lightly rusticated with the main entrance west of center on 63rd Street. To the left and along Broadway there are wide plate-glass storefronts, and to the right is a black-painted stone, metal and glass storefront that projects out at the west end, has a rounded corner, and continues most of the way along the west facade on Columbus Avenue as a projecting section. The main entrance has glass double-doors and is covered by a large, suspended metal canopy with paneling and seashell cresting along the upper edge. The black-painted storefront to the west has a revolving door next to the main hotel entrance, and the projecting section has a large number of French windows with transoms; the rounded corner has two bays of windows divided into many small panes. At the south end of the west facade, the projecting section ends and there is a vent and set of metal service doors.

The 2nd floor has 10 bays of tall round-arched windows, divided by metal mullions into tripartite configurations in three vertical levels. Each is covered at the top of the arch by a sloped awning, and three flagpoles project from above the entrance. The end bays are set farther apart, and the 3rd bay from the east extends down, breaking the cornice at the top of the ground floor. The east facade has 10 more matching bays at the 2nd floor (with awnings), and the west facade has eight, with the end bays set apart. The 3rd floor is transitional, set off by a cornice and with red-brick panels on the piers. The 10 bays of single-windows on each of the three facades have stone surrounds with dentiled cornices.

The upper floors have the same window pattern as the 3rd, with simple stone sills, and black metal air-conditioning vents cut below many of the windows. The stone string course sets off the 12th floor, and a larger dentiled cornice sets off the 13th, which has round-arched stone surrounds at each window, and rosettes between them. The attic level at the east and west facades has low, squared opening with stone surrounds (with no openings at the end bays); the west facade also has two regular-sized single-windows at the south end, which rises up higher. The north facade also rises up higher at the 14th floor, except at the ends, and has four large, wide bays of tripartite windows. There is a rooftop bar and patio, partially enclosed by glass on the west wing.

The south facade of the east wing has one bay of single-windows, and the HOTEL EMPIRE sign is mounted on the roof here. The hotel contains 426 guest rooms. Its interior was redesigned in 2007 by Goodman Charlton. The ground floor is occupied by a Duane-Reade pharmacy, a Starbucks Coffee, and P.J. Clarke's restaurant.

The interior exterior was used as a recurring filming location for the series "Gossip Girl" after Chuck Bass buys the building in S3. It was later used for S1E1 of the Starz Network series "Power" where it was referred to as the fictional Wooster Hotel.

www.empirehotelnyc.com/
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