The 13-story hotel – with its striking white terracotta façade with ornamentation made specifically for the project and not pre-fabricated stock items, as was standard practice where they rented 80 rooms for $800 per day.
Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders arranged for their stay. According to
The New York Times, Castro felt that "Negroes would be more sympathetic" to his cause, and indeed he drew enthusiastic crowds of supporters, along with some protesters. Subsequent to Castro's visit, other
Third World leaders, such as
Patrice Lumumba of the
Belgian Congo, chose to stay at the Theresa. In October 1960,
John F. Kennedy campaigned for the presidency at the hotel, along with
Eleanor Roosevelt and other leading figures in the
Democratic Party.
Ron Brown, who was the
United States Secretary of Commerce in the
Clinton administration, grew up in the hotel, where his father worked as manager, and U.S. Congressman
Charles Rangel (D-Harlem) once worked there as a desk clerk. The hotel suffered from the continued deterioration of Harlem through the 1950s and 1960s and, ironically, from the end of segregation elsewhere in the city. As African Americans of means now had alternatives, they stopped coming to Harlem. The owners had not upgraded or modernized the hotel in decades and it was said to be "dowdy" at best. New owners began converting the building to office space beginning in 1966, and the hotel closed in 1967. The building was renovated and restored, with the exterior largely kept as it had originally been, instead of being replaced with an aluminum and glass façade, an alternative which had been considered. The building reopened in 1970 as
Theresa Towers, though a sign with the old name is still painted on the side of the building, and the old name is still commonly used. As well as housing commercial and professional tenants, it serves as an auxiliary campus for
Columbia University's
Teachers College and the
Touro College of Pharmacy. ==Notable guests, tenants and employees==