Hudson Hotel (New York City, New York)

269-foot, 25-story Neo-Renaissance residential building completed in 1929. Designed by Morris & O'Connor with structural elements by the Guastavino Fireproof Tile Co., it opened as the clubhouse for the American Women’s Association, organized by Anne Morgan, the daughter of financier J. Pierpont Morgan. The organization, officially founded in 1921, was intended to advance causes of social justice among her crowd of socially advantaged women. As completed, the clubhouse has 1,250 sleeping rooms, along with a swimming pool, gym, meeting rooms, a restaurant, music rooms and wide terraces on the upper setback. But in 1941, with bankruptcy proceedings under way, the association gave up and the clubhouse was converted to the Henry Hudson Hotel, for both men and women.

More recently, the space served as the headquarters for public television station WNET, which owned the 2nd through 9th floors and uses the 58th Street side as its entrance; the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour was broadcast from the building. In 1997, the building was purchased by Morgans Hotel Group and underwent a 3-year renovation, dropping the "Henry" from its name. WNET relocated to 450 West 33rd. Due to the Covid pandemic, the hotel was closed in 2020, and subsequently sold in 2022 for conversion into apartments.

The facades are clad in reddish-brown brick with a 2-story limestone base on 57th Street, and a 5-story limestone section at the middle of the 58th Street facade, and the building wraps around a central courtyard. The large central stone area on the north facade has has a single opening at the ground floor, with recessed glass doors. Above the tall ground floor, at the 2nd level is a band of yellow-tinted glass, behind which is the hotel bar. The 3rd floor has a row of eight small, square windows, also with yellow-tinted glass, and angled, grey stone shutter-like flaps at the right edges. There are no openings at the top of this section, which is capped by a metal coping, the middle section of the upper floors is recessed behind and above this stone section.

The brick east wing has two bays, and the wider west wing has four. At the ground floor both wings have black metal infill with service entrances topped by louvers. At the 2nd floor the two tall openings on the east wing are filled by black metal louvers, and the western one on the west wing is as well; the others have windows. All of them are topped by splayed stone lintels and have thin stone sills. The 3rd floor has smaller windows, with a stone sill course below, and a stone cornice setting off the upper floors. The east wing has regular single-windows on the rest of the floors, while the west wing has smaller single-windows in its two middle bays beginning at the 6th floor. Both wings have setbacks above the 13th, 16th, & 19th floor, where they meet with the recessed middle wall. The middle facade section on 58th Street has eight bays of single-windows above the stone section, and the side walls each have three bays of single-windows, one ending at each setback. The top floors set back above the 22nd floor, and end at a lower roof line at the 23rd. A small tower section rises up at the west end, extending to the upper roof line. The tower has three bays of wide-spaced single-windows on its north and south elevations, and four single-windows on the west.

The south facade on 57th Street has a west wing with five large bays of plate-glass storefronts and an east wing with three bays, separated by a middle section that is topped by a stone balustrade, above and behind which is a deep central courtyard. The middle section's ground floor has another storefront bay and a round-arched bay, and has no openings at the 2nd floor. The middle bay of the east wing has a service entrance with metal double-doors framed by fluted pilasters and topped by an entablature with a rounded pediment broken by the (smaller) window at the 2nd floor. The far east bay also has a set of metal service doors.

At the 3rd floor, both wings have tall, multi-pane windows topped by splayed stone lintels; the middle three at the west wing are set in shallow-recessed brick round-arches with keystones. At the west wing, the 4th floor has a stone panel at each bay with a carved rosette and elaborate garland; the east wing has three 2-over-2 windows with stone sills. Beginning at the 5th floor there are eight single-windows at the west wing (with the end pairs grouped slightly closer together), and four single-windows at the east wing. Black metal air-conditioning vents are cut below each window. Both wings have a large setback marked by a grey stone band above the 14th floor; there is a landscaped terrace above the setback, joined across the gap in the middle by a skybridge recessed back toward the central courtyard. There are also two connecting buttresses at the 7th & 11th floors. The inward-facing side walls of the wings both have five bays, with three single-windows alternating with two smaller bathroom windows. Above the setbacks the west wing has three widely-spaced bays of single-windows, and the east wing has two single-windows flanking a smaller bathroom window. Both wings end at the 22nd floor. The rear, south-facing wall behind the courtyard has seven bays of single-windows.

The west facade overlooking the avenue has three bays of single-windows on the south wing that projects out farther then the rest of the facade. The grey stone band at the 14th-floor setback continues around to the short north-facing wall, which has two bays of single-windows. The rest of the west facade has 17 bays of single-windows.

The south end of the east facade is visible and has two bays of single-windows at the south edge, with another two farther back, one of which begins at the 14th floor.

www.hudsonhotel.com/
 high-riseapartment building1929_constructionNeo-Renaissance (architecture)
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:  40°46'5"N 73°59'5"W
This article was last modified 4 months ago