Broadway Plaza Hotel (New York City, New York)

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163-foot, 13-story hotel originally completed in 1876 as a 3-story Neo-Grec building. Ten additional stories were added to this building during a drastic alteration in 1991, designed by Elfenbein & Cox. The ground floor is faced n brown stone tiles. On 27th Street there are four round-arched windows grouped at the east end; another round-arched window and an angled door with a round-arched window on top in the center; and a service door and storefront at the west end. On Broadway, there are storefronts, and the main entry to the hotel, a smallish doorway framed in marble. A canopy is suspended over the entry, and a broad, black band with a blue stripe in the middle and silver metal caps at top and bottom runs across the top of the ground floor.

The upper floors are clad in orange brick; the lower section is three bays wide on both facades. Each bay has paired windows divided by metal mullions; grey stone sills extend out to the projecting center area of the piers. Below each window group is a spandrel of dark-red brick, with one air-conditioning vent in the outer bays, and two vents in the center bays. The 2nd floor has angled, black metal awning with the words "BROADWAY PLAZA HOTEL" at each bay, and there is a large, vertical "BROADWAY PLAZA HOTEL" sign attached to the northeast corner, running from the 2nd to the 6th floor, where the a major setback on both sides.

Behind the setback, the top seven floors seven much narrower bays of double-windows on 27th Street, with setbacks at the 10th, 11th & 12th floors. These windows also have dark-red brick below them. On the east facade, the upper floors have one bay filled in with dark-red brick at the south edge; to the north is a single-window bay and two bays of double-windows matching those on the north facade. A stone coping caps each setback from the north facade, and the main roof line above. The south elevation is a blank wall of orange brick at the lower, front section, and dark-red brick on the rest of the expanse.

In the late-19th-century, it became a hotel and was the site in 1894 of the first kinetoscope parlor, where Canadian businessmen Andrew and George Holland screened the first commercial exhibition of motion pictures. Customers paid twenty-five cents to watch Thomas Edison's invention through ten peep-hole viewers placed in a row. The Hollands's monopoly, however, was brief and by the end of the year such parlors had spread throughout the city and the United States.

The 4th Floor Lounge offers complimentary breakfasts in the morning with coffee and tea served 24 hours per day. The hotel also provides 24 hour in room food delivery service from participating restaurants in the area. The hotel's 69 guestrooms, updated with cherry wood furnishings in 2006, feature desks, high speed Internet access and cable television.