![]() The locomotive barreled into the rear of another passenger train that was waiting to enter the station the accident killed fifteen people instantly, injuring dozens more. On January 8, 1902, the engineer of the White Plains local heading into Grand Central couldn’t see that he had a red signal against him as it was obscured by soot, smoke, and steam. The new IRT subway, which would link Grand Central to the burgeoning theater district at Times Square as well as downtown offices, was under construction.īut the immediate cause was tragedy. The Pennsylvania railroad had received approval to tunnel under the Hudson River and was snapping up land near 34th Street. He built Grand Central Depot in 1871 this was expanded into Grand Central Station between 18 before being replaced by the 1913 Beaux-Arts terminal.Ī number of pressures sparked the New York Central to consider building a new station at the turn of the 20th century. An 1854 ordinance had banned steam locomotion south of 42nd Street, so after Cornelius Vanderbilt-the self-styled Commodore for whom the hotel was later named-purchased the Hudson River Railroad and the Harlem and New York lines in the 1860s, he quickly jettisoned the custom of having horses haul passengers south to the more populous part of the city. Grand Central Terminal opened on 42nd Street in 1913 as the third train station on that spot. In destroying the hotel, not only will Donald Trump’s first major Manhattan real estate project be erased, so too will one of the most important vestiges of the original Terminal City, a development that forever changed New York City real estate. In February, just one week after the largely ignored centennial of the Commodore, developer TF Cornerstone announced that the hotel will be torn down to make way for a “2 million-square-foot tower that includes office and retail space as well as a new Hyatt hotel.” Trump had played on the fears of city officials, in essence creating a crisis where none existed so that he could get his way.įor years, Trump and his admirers have cited the Commodore deal as a symbol of the real estate developer’s acumen, but that symbol will soon disappear. Trump’s approach worked, and the Commodore reopened in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt, with a shiny glass facelift courtesy of architects Gruzen Samton and Der Scutt. Trump argued that if he was not allowed to take over the hotel, the Commodore would be “boarded up,” becoming not just an eyesore on 42nd Street, but a potent symbol that New York had hit rock bottom. All he needed in return was a sweetheart sale price from the railroad-under $10 million-and a 50-year tax abatement from the city. He had a plan to strip the Commodore down to its bones, rebuild it for $100 million, and get the Hyatt corporation-which then owned no Manhattan hotels-to run everything. Trump, whose father, Fred, had built upward of 22,000 units of housing in the outer boroughs, was itching not only to enter the Manhattan real estate market, but to do so as audaciously as possible. The previous April, a massage parlor in the hotel had been evicted on the grounds that it was a “ sex palace.” John Koskien, a representative of the hotel’s management company, said at the time that “the only thing that could save the Commodore is a major turnaround in labor and economic conditions”-or a knight in shining armor.Ī young real estate entrepreneur named Donald J. ![]() The 2,000-room Commodore, billed as the “most wonderful hotel in the world,” was part of a boom in accommodations in New York many of the same revelers had opened the Hotel Pennsylvania on Seventh Avenue just four days earlier.īy 1976 the Commodore was rundown and a little seedy. ![]() On opening night, nearly 3,000 people gathered in the Moorish-inspired grand ballroom on 42nd Street-among them Mayor John Hylan and opera star Enrico Caruso-to celebrate. The hotel, a fading gem next to the even more dilapidated Grand Central Terminal, had opened on January 29, 1919, as an important part of the New York Central railroad’s ambitious Terminal City project. ![]() Louis, Missouri, settled his bill at the front desk of the Hotel Commodore and became the final guest to leave the premises. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |