Watson Hotel (New York City, New York)

 hotel, shelter, 1963_construction, Modern (architecture), asylum seeker shelter

184-foot, 17-story mid-century modern hotel completed in 1963 as the city's first Holiday Inn. Designed by Max M. Simon, it also includes a 11-story south tower on 56th Street, with a driveway in the middle (entered from 57th Street) and a low-rise section joining the two. The complex was sold in 2016, and rebranded from a Holiday Inn to the Watson Hotel.

The north tower is clad in beige brick above a 3-story white stone base. The ground floor is slightly recessed at the east end, with a service door; to the right are two wide bays of windows; all of the eastern bays are covered by sloped, green canvas awnings. The main entrance is toward the west, with more deeply-recessed glass doors under a projecting metal canopy that is topped by a peaked glass section. At the far west end is an open driveway under the upper floors, leading back between the north and south towers, and turning left into an underground parking garage.

Above the ground floor there are paired groups of tripartite windows, staggered at each floor. Every floor has six pairs, as well as a separate tripartite window at either the east and west end, depending on the floor. There are tan concrete panels below each window group. There is a setback above the 15th floor, with the top two floors also having tripartite windows, but aligned across 13 bays on the 16th floor and 11 bays on the 17th floor, instead of being grouped and staggered. A tall mechanical level rises up from the middle of the roof.

The east and west elevations are clad in beige brick with no openings. The rear, south-facing facade is also brick and has five bays of tripartite windows on the west side, and six bays on the east side, separated by a middle section with a bay of paired single-windows. This section rises straight up to the roof line, while the ends set back above the 16th floor.

The 11-story south tower on 56th Street is clad in beige brick (with a lighter shade at the 2-story base). The only openings at the ground floor are a loading dock and service entrances at the west end. The rest of the facade is set back behind a 1-story brick wall painted with a mural. The tall 2nd floor of the base has ten bays of single-windows on the west side, with a few metal vents at the lower part of the story. There is a shallow setback to the upper floors, with a metal railing. These floors all have 15 bays of tripartite windows. The end bays set back above the 9th floor, and the west half of the facade rises only to the 10th floor, with a rooftop pool above it, surrounded by glass-and-metal railing panels. The east half has windows at the 11th floor, and is also topped by a roof deck; a mechanical penthouse separates the two roof levels. The east and west elevations of the south tower are brick, with no openings except for two small windows at the top floor on the east side, above two metal service doors opening to the terrace created by the end-bay setback; the west side has a double-door opening onto a similar terrace. The north-facing facade of the south tower matches the south one. The hotel contains a total of 596 guest rooms.