Row NYC Hotel (New York City, New York)

 hotel, shelter, asylum seeker shelter

308-foot, 28-story Renaissance-revival hotel completed in 1928. Designed by Schwartz & Gross, it opened as the Hotel Lincoln - the largest hotel in the city at the time, with 1,331 guest rooms. The interior was designed by Jacques L. Delamarre. It was purchased by prominent American real estate developer William Zeckendorf in September 1957, remodeled and renamed the Manhattan Hotel. The existing Hotel Lincoln sign was removed and in 1958 a sign was added to replace it—an enormous red letter "M," 31 feet wide and 12 feet deep. Zeckendorf ran the Manhattan until 1964, when it was sold to the English and became the Royal Manhattan. By the late 1970s the hotel was boarded up. In 1978, the Milstein family purchased the hotel and reopened it in 1980. They named it the Milford Plaza Hotel because they did not want to change the huge neon "M" sign on the roof. The Milford Plaza was closed at the end of 2009 for renovations, sold, and the red letter M was removed. It was renamed The Row NYC in 2014. Included in the renovation were makeovers of all 1,331 guest rooms and guest suites, renovation of the lobby (including a unique three-story, glass-enclosed lobby design and illuminated grand staircase flanked by see-through guest elevators) and public areas, and a new 2-story base.

The modernized base is clad in glass, with the piers visble behind the panes, except for the center section on the avenue, where the main entrance is. This 4-bay part is faced in grey granite, with two sets of revolving doors at the middle two bays, and large windows in the two outer bays, and at the 2nd floor. The doors are covered by a suspended metal marquee. Due to the sllight slope of the site, the base to the north of the main entrance has three floors instead of two. Both ends of the base are lined with storefronts, and the base is capped by a stone-and-metal band course, with an illuminated bottom section. There are white metal panels at the east end of the north facade on 45th Street, with service doors at the ground floor.

Above the base the building is E-shaped, with two light courts on the east side creating three wings. It is clad in tan brick, with limestone highlights. The main, west-facing facade on the avenue is divided into three parts; the center part has three bays of paired windows and is framed by two banded limestone bays of single-windows. The north and south ends have five bays of single-windows, with banded limestone bays of single-windows at the corners. The windows in the brick bays have simple stone sills (joined at the paired windows), while the stone-enframed windows in the flanking bays are topped by stone panels with varied geometric ornament. On the north and south facades, the banded limestone end bays frame four middle bays of single-windows, flanked by a bay of paired windows on each end. At both of these facades the corner bays terminate at the 21st floor in small stone pavilions, each with round-arched openings containing two small round-arched windows, and pyramidal roofs. The outer brick bays set back above the 20th floor, while the four middle bays extend to the 22nd floor before setting back, with additional setbacks every other floor up to the lower roof line at the north and south wings. Each setback is marked by a corbelled band, also with dentils above the first setback. These setbacks continue on the west facade, with the 5-bay middle section extending up to the 28th floor, where there are similar stone-clad, round-arched bays to those at the corners, each with a pair of round-arched windows. A mechanical penthouse level, also clad in limestone, is slightly set back in the center.

The rear, east-facing facade is clad in tan brick, with the middle wing having two bays of paired windows flanked by a bay of single-windows on each side. The north and south wings have (from the inside out) a bay of single-windows, two bays of small bathroom windows, another bay of single-windows, another bay of small windows, and a final bay of single-windows. The setbacks from the other facades carry onto the upper floors of this elevation, and there are connecting beams spanning the light courts at the 8th, 15th, & 22nd floors. The inner walls of the light courts are spotted with several additional bays of single-windows and small bathroom windows.

The ground floor is occupied by a Duane Reade by Walgreens pharmacy.

usmodernist.org/AF/AF-1929-12-1.pdf
archive.org/details/wroughtinmetal00renn/page/n72/mode/...