4 Park Avenue

4 Park Avenue (formerly the Vanderbilt Hotel) is in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 33rd Street on the south, Park Avenue on the east, and 34th Street on the north. The building's land lot has a total area of . An entrance to the New York City Subway's 33rd Street station is directly outside the building's southeast corner. The building is on the same block as the Madison Belmont Building to the west. Other nearby buildings include 2 Park Avenue to the south, 3 Park Avenue to the east, B. Altman and Company Building to the northwest, and 29 East 32nd Street to the southwest. The site was part of the 18th-century estate of merchant Robert Murray. In the 1860s, after the Park Avenue Tunnel was built, the segment of Fourth Avenue between 34th and 40th Streets was renamed Park Avenue, while the avenue's name south of 34th Street remained unchanged. Since the house numbering system reset at the southern end of Park Avenue, the Vanderbilt Hotel and other buildings between 32nd and 34th Streets originally had Fourth Avenue addresses. The segment from 32nd to 34th Streets, outside the current building, was renamed Park Avenue in 1924, at which time the building gained a Park Avenue address. Fourth and Park Avenues in Murray Hill had been developed with upscale residences by the 1870s. The residences included those of the Vanderbilt family, who built Grand Central Depot (later Grand Central Terminal) for the New York and Harlem Railroad several blocks north in 1871. The Vanderbilt family moved uptown in 1880 but retained ownership of the site. Just before present-day 4 Park Avenue was developed, the land had been occupied by six buildings. ==Architecture==

4 Park Avenue was designed by Warren and Wetmore in the neoclassical style and developed by Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt in 1912. Numerous other contractors were involved in the construction process. As built, it was 22 stories high and contained three full basements, as well as a partial fourth basement level. Emporis cites the building as being 20 stories and high. The ornament consisted of cream-colored low reliefs, while the walls were made of mottled, semi-glazed brick in blue-grey and plum colors. In 1967, the lowest three floors were redesigned with a glass and travertine facade. The entrance to the apartments on the upper floors is directly on Park Avenue and carries the address 4 Park Avenue. The offices on the lower floors are accessed from 33rd and 34th Streets and originally carried the address 6 Park Avenue. Upper stories Above the base, the building is designed with two light courts facing Park Avenue. These divided the upper stories into three wings, arranged in an "E" shape. When the building was used as a hotel, this allowed each guest to have an exterior window. The western frontage was designed as a fireproof barrier without any windows. The light courts, combined with the narrowness of the site, required that the hotel be taller than most others in New York City at the time of its construction (with the exception of the Belmont Hotel). The parapet measured tall. The roof was coated with asbestos as a fireproofing measure. The terracotta at the pinnacle was made by New York Architectural Terra Cotta. Mechanical and structural features The mechanical equipment was placed in the hotel's subbasements. There were several Babcock & Wilcox boilers, which were fed by automatic stokers. Each stoker was supplied by a traveling hopper with a capacity of about , filled by a coal conveyor with continuously moving buckets. Additionally, there were three direct current electric generators that were capable of generating at any one time, as well as a central oiling system and two garbage incinerators. The steam pipes in each room were hidden by marble countertops and asbestos curtains. The hotel had an ice machine, which had a capacity of , for the refrigeration and cooling systems. There was also a machine capable of filtering , which cleaned the air for the Della Robbia Room in the basement. The original boilers were removed in the 1960s. The lobby was treated as a single, large open space with a vaulted ceiling. This room had a Numidian-marble floor. A "Far East Room" was created in the lobby after World War I in advance of a dinner in which Ferdinand Foch was a guest; it remained in operation through the late 1950s. The first-floor lobby was clad in imitation Caen stone, The main lobby had a vaulted ceiling supported by square piers. These piers curved directly onto the ceiling and were clad with sandstone. In the lobby was a frieze created by Beatrice Astor Chanler in relief. The frieze was a dull gold color, while the reliefs were designed in the style of Italian ceramic artist Luca della Robbia. Barbara Comfort designed a tapestry for the lobby, which was unveiled in 1967. The tapestry depicts a scene from the American Revolutionary War in which Mary Lindley Murray, an 18th-century resident of the site, distracted British troops during the Landing at Kip's Bay, giving American troops time to escape. Della Robbia Room The basement originally contained a double-height grill room with a vaulted ceiling and elevated gallery. It was known as the Della Robbia Room, after Luca Della Robbia, and could fit a thousand guests. The bar at the southern section of the restaurant was originally nicknamed the "Crypt". There was a kitchen below the bar, as well as a laundry room at the north end of the grill room. The spaces were split across multiple levels, each only slightly above the other. A door from Park Avenue led to a central corridor directly above the kitchen, where a staircase led down to the main grill room. The bar was three steps below the corridor to the south, while the gallery was three steps above the corridor to the north. A staircase also led from the grill room to the lobby, and the bar also had its own door from 33rd Street. these tiles depicted motifs such as flowers and faces. but the Crypt and a portion of the grill room remain in their original condition. The remaining section is less than one-fifth the size of the original grill room. and has contained Wolfgang's Steakhouse since 2004. Along with the Rathskeller at the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, the Della Robbia Room contains one of the few extant examples of Rookwood tiles in the world. The room was generally decorated in a cream and blue color scheme. The piers were covered in tiles, decorated with tropical birds, fish, flowers, and foliage "in a slightly humorous vein"; The two southernmost bays of the gallery remain largely intact and are used as the rear of the modern restaurant space. The rooms could be rearranged into suites with several bedrooms leading off a parlor. and the baseboards were made of marble. The decorative patterns extended to small details, such as cameo heads on the cast-iron balustrades of the staircases. These bells were themselves placed within iron boxes to prevent the sound from disturbing other guests. As a fireproofing measure, the rooms did not contain wood decorations, Six office floors were created below the apartments, and there were also storefronts and a garage. The office floors measure and consist of three of the basement levels, as well as the first through third stories above ground. ==History==

By the first decade of the 20th century, the upscale residences along Fourth and Park Avenues were being replaced with commercial structures. This was because of the Murray Hill Restrictive Agreement, which was enacted in 1847 and restricted the development of non-residential buildings in that area. The restriction extended south of 34th Street, including the future Vanderbilt Hotel site. Later that month, Warren and Wetmore filed plans for a 21-story office and loft building, to be built on the west side of Park Avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets. The building would have had a metal roof high. In December 1908, Vanderbilt filed plans for a 19-story hotel on the site. Existing tenants were asked to leave the site by June 1909. Part of the hotel was to be within the Murray Hill restricted zone. However, the neighborhood's residents did not file any lawsuit against his plans in the year after he filed them. The law firm of Carter Ledyard & Milburn (who represented financier J. P. Morgan Jr., a supporter of the restricted zone) told Vanderbilt that it might file an injunction against him if the hotel plans proceeded, By August 1909, the buildings on the site were being cleared. The New York Times said the Vanderbilt Hotel, along with the Cameron Building at Madison Avenue and 34th Street, was evidence of the "weakening" of the Murray Hill restricted zone. The United Hotels Company of America, which was formed in 1910, agreed to operate the Vanderbilt Hotel as one of its first properties. The William L. Crow Company started constructing the hotel in March 1910. The bricklayers' unions went on strike in September 1910, temporarily halting all work on the hotel. Work was again paused in September 1911, when all laborers went on strike in support of the marble polishers' union, which had gone on strike for several weeks. At the time, the marble was being installed in the hotel. Most laborers returned to work shortly afterward, but the marble laborers continued striking until the end of the year. of which $700,000 was spent on furnishings alone. The Vanderbilt Hotel originally contained New York City's first women-only bar; barely any women used the bar, so it was converted to a men's bar two weeks after the hotel opened. All work at the hotel was completed by March 1913, The Women's City Club of New York leased Vanderbilt's apartment as a clubhouse early the next year, but it only occupied the apartment until 1918. The Vanderbilt penthouse was occupied in the 1920s by figures such as tenor Enrico Caruso The Vanderbilt soon became a popular meeting place for companies in the textile and women's apparel industries. In its early years, the hotel hosted events such as luncheons, meetings for the private Paul Jones Club, and a party for Warren G. Harding's 1920 presidential campaign. The hotel's guests included businessman Diamond Jim Brady, actor Rudolph Valentino, philosopher Henri Bergson, ballroom dancer Irene Castle, and actresses Maude Adams, Dorothy Gish, and Lillian Gish. The hotel received 47,000 phone calls in the three hours following the stunt. A syndicate led by Edmund L. Baylies, William A. Chanler, the general manager Walton H. Marshall, and the hotel's architect Charles D. Wetmore bought the hotel in October 1925. The hotel continued to host events and meetings by groups like the New York Newspaper Woman's Club, the National Council of Women of the United States, and the United States Lawn Tennis Association. ''Harper's Bazaar'' magazine described the hotel's Della Robbia Restaurant in 1929 as having "never lost its popularity". 1930s to 1960s The Park Avenue Club opened a clubhouse within the top three stories of the hotel in 1933. In March 1935, the New York Life Insurance Company moved to foreclose on the hotel's second mortgage loan of $200,000. Marshall, who had directed the hotel from its opening, remained in his position as its general manager. New York Life acquired the hotel that May at a foreclosure auction in which it bid $2.419 million. By November 1935, the Knott Management Corporation had taken over the Vanderbilt's operation for New York Life. Knott then appointed Oscar Banse as the hotel's new general manager. During the late 1930s, the hotel hosted exhibitions such as the Pottery and Glassware Show. A guide in 1939 described the Vanderbilt as "one of the hotels in New York that has kept its popularity for many years". Manger Hotels bought the Vanderbilt Hotel from New York Life in February 1941, though the hotel's management was retained. The next year, the Vanderbilt's general manager Thomas J. Kelly II announced that air-conditioning would be installed in 100 of the suites. During the 1950s and 1960s, the hotel hosted events like an exhibit of furniture, a showcase of a rare Bible, and a stamp-issuance ceremony. The hotel was known as the Manger Vanderbilt by the mid-1950s. The Della Robbia Restaurant continued to operate within the Manger Vanderbilt, and the hotel also had other eateries such as the Purple Tree. The architectural firm of Finn and Jenter filed plans in 1956 for the installation of a central air conditioning system at the hotel, which was to cost $500,000. By the 1960s, patronage at the Vanderbilt had dropped significantly from its heyday, and there was also rising demand for office space in Manhattan. The New York Daily News announced in December 1965 that the Vanderbilt Hotel would close to make way for an office building. Office and apartment use Conversion and early tenants A group led by John Marqusee bought the Vanderbilt from Manger Hotels in April 1966 for $3.625 million. Setrick Construction Corporation was hired as the main contractor. M. H. Lanston leased one of the storefronts, using a portion of the Della Robbia Room as a storeroom, while Lerner Parking leased another portion of the restaurant space as a parking garage. a branch office of stock brokerage EF Hutton, and United Cerebral Palsy. 1980s to present By the 1980s, Louis Feil of The Feil Organization owned the building. After the demolition of the Art Deco-style Marine Grill at nearby Herald Square in 1991, preservation group Friends of Terra Cotta started advocating for the remaining section of the room, the onetime Crypt, to be designated as an interior city landmark. The group started a petition and collected 500 signatures in support of this designation. By 1999, the Crypt was occupied by a restaurant called J. T.'s American-Italian Grill, operated by National Integrated Food Services. In 2002, Israel Berger & Associates restored the terracotta on the facade for $700,000. Afterward, architectural historian Mosette Broderick said the ground-floor alteration was old enough to be designated as a landmark, but Broderick did not believe that the modified facade still carried historical significance. Two years later, Wolfgang's Steakhouse opened within the space. During the 2010s, 4 Park Avenue contained the offices of property manager Charles H. Greenthal & Co., as well as a Crunch gym. The building underwent a capital renovation in the late 2010s and early 2020s. In 2021, the State University of New York's Empire State College leased the mezzanine and second floor; the Feil Organization still owned 4 Park Avenue. During that decade, the building's other commercial tenants included the Foundry Learning Center, ground-level stores for Duane Reade and Wolfgang's Steakhouse, and two companies within the basements. ==Impact==

's 1910 work Old and New New York, showing the Vanderbilt Hotel under construction|alt=The photograph "Old and New New York" by Alfred Stieglitz. The photo was most likely taken on the North side of 34th, just east of 5th Avenue, facing east, with the building under construction being the Vanderbilt Hotel which stands along the east side of Park, between 33rd and 34th. The tower in the background is the 71st Regiment Armory (now demolished), which sat on the southwest side of Park and 34th. When the hotel opened, one writer said: "The Hotel Vanderbilt [...] shows so liberal an appreciation of the modern spirit applied to hotel needs. It shows also an understanding of up-to-date construction and of refinement of decoration." According to architect Norval White, "the ravages to the ground floor have taken it off the preservation list". The hotel was also used as a filming location for So Young, So Bad in 1950. ==See also==