Martinique New York on Broadway, Curio Collection by Hilton

The Martinique New York is on the eastern side of Greeley Square, south of Herald Square, in the Koreatown and Midtown South neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The irregularly shaped land lot covers , with a frontage of on Broadway and a depth of between 33rd and 34th Streets. The building shares the city block with the Hotel Pierrepont and the Hotel at Fifth Avenue (the former Aberdeen Hotel) to the east. Other nearby structures include the Empire State Building to the northeast, Herald Towers to the north, Macy's Herald Square to the northwest, Manhattan Mall to the west, and the former Grand Hotel and the Hotel Wolcott one block south. There were once several department stores to the west, while there are office and hotel buildings to the east. To the south are other former hotels including the Gilsey House and Grand Hotel. The Martinique also wrapped around a 20-story hotel at the southeast corner of Broadway and 33rd Street. An entrance to the New York City Subway's 34th Street–Herald Square station and to the PATH system's adjacent 33rd Street station is directly outside the hotel, within Greeley Square. ==Architecture==

Henry Janeway Hardenbergh designed the Martinique Hotel in the French Renaissance style. The hotel is variously described as being 16, or 19 stories high. The design "capitalized on the openness of Greeley Square". A 1918 publication stated: "New York is noted for its beautiful buildings, and the Martinique is no exception". The building is a New York City designated landmark and is also part of the Historic Hotels of America. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2025. The hotel was constructed in three sections. The original building on 33rd Street was erected in 1897–1898, followed by an extension to the middle of the Broadway frontage erected in 1901–1903. The section at the corner of 32nd Street and Broadway, including the entire 32nd Street frontage, was erected in 1909–1910. The original hotel measures wide, while the annex on Broadway measures wide. The 1910 annex's interior is of French Renaissance design, while its exterior uses a mix of French Renaissance and Spanish details. The addition and the older structure are connected with a large courtyard between the two buildings, forming an angle at this point. The 32nd Street elevation of the facade is divided vertically into nine bays, while the Broadway elevation is six bays wide and the 33rd Street elevation is five bays wide. On all three elevations, the articulation consists of three horizontal sections similar to the components of a column (namely a base, shaft, and capital). These sections are separated from each other by a cornice above the fourth story and a string course above the eleventh story. 32nd Street elevation The southern elevation on 32nd Street is the building's primary facade and dates to the 1910 expansion. The main entrance is on 32nd Street, through a three-bay-wide marble doorway at the center of the ground level, which is topped by a projecting marquee. The other two bays of the central pavilion are plainly decorated, and a molded frieze runs above the second-story windows. In the four outermost bays, the second-story windows are topped by geometric lintels, while those on the third story are topped by broken pediments and crests. The fifth-story windows contain volutes above them, and their sills rest atop the fourth-story cornice. The central dormer's pediments are curved, while the smaller dormers have pediments with gables. The Martinique Hotel has two banks of elevators, one each to the north and south, in addition to several stairs. The bronze elevator doors have ornate decorations. The stairways are clustered around the center of the 33rd Street wing and the center of the 32nd Street wing's southern end. The southern bank of elevators has three shafts and adjoins stair A, which connects the first basement to the eighteenth floor and has marble treads, a cast-iron balustrade, and a wooden handrail. The northern bank of elevators, which includes two shafts, is surrounded by stair B, which rises from the second basement to the seventeenth floor. Stair C adjoins a freight elevator. In addition, there is a freight elevator west of stair B, while to the east is stair D, which connects the first through second stories only. Basements Just underneath the western part of the ground story was the grill room, decorated in a modern German style. which extends north from a double-height vestibule on 32nd Street. The walls were of Greek Skyros marble in gray and yellow with light-purple veining. A similar color scheme was used on the coffered ceiling, The eastern part of the lobby has three piers. in addition to an elevator lobby and the stair hall to the west. The hotel's developer, William R. H. Martin, had purchased the clock from Mrs. Elizabeth C. Cole when the hotel was under construction. This foyer, which served as the original main entrance, has a terrazzo floor dating from the 1930s, and there is space for a restaurant next to it. The Broadway Cafe was to the left (west) of the lobby The cafe contained walls of light-colored, artificial stone, and its ceiling was treated in the Italian Renaissance style, ornamented in low relief. Above the ground level is a mezzanine with two banks of elevators, one each to the north and south. The mezzanine is otherwise plain in design, with floors made of granite, in addition to ceilings and walls made of plasterboard. The mezzanine, overlooking the hotel's ground-level corridor, contained space for the hotel's orchestra, as well as reading and writing rooms. The modern-day ground-floor and mezzanine spaces are divided into retail and restaurant spaces, the latter of which extend onto the mezzanine. In addition, the mezzanine has offices, kitchens, and other non-public rooms. As of 2021, the hotel has of event space in 14 rooms, which can fit 500 people. After the hotel's two annexes were completed, in 1910, it had 600 guest rooms and 400 bathrooms. The suites at the southwest corner, facing the intersection of Broadway and 32nd Street, contained elliptical parlors. The modern-day guest rooms have carpeted floors, along with plasterboard ceilings and walls; none of the original ornamentation remains in the guest rooms. On the seventeenth floor, there is a lounge at the southwestern corner with similar ornamentation to the guest rooms. The eighteenth floor is devoid of decorations, and there is a penthouse structure above the southern portion of that floor. ==History==

When the Hotel Martinique was developed at the end of the 19th century, many commercial structures were being developed around Herald Square. Manhattan's theater district had begun to shift northward along Broadway, from Union Square and Madison Square to Herald Square and eventually Times Square, during the first decade of the 20th century. One block to the east, new department store buildings were quickly being developed on Fifth Avenue. Because of growing demand for these theaters and department stores, numerous hotels were developed on Broadway between Madison Square and Times Square during the late 19th and early 20th century, including the Martinique. The opening of Pennsylvania Station, Macy's Herald Square, and the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad's 33rd Street Terminal in the 1900s further spurred growth immediately around Herald Square. The hotel, located at 54–58 West 33rd Street, was planned to be 16 stories high and was budgeted at $400,000. The Hotel Martinique was originally intended as an apartment hotel. Although the hotel opened in 1898 as a speculative investment, it instantly became popular. The success of the Martinique prompted another developer to construct an apartment hotel on a neighboring site. Soon after the Martinique opened, Martin converted the Martinique to a transient hotel; even this did not provide enough room for the growing demand of the neighborhood. The Construction News wrote in 1901 that the annex "is said to be the first hotel building in the world to use fireproof wood throughout". The first annex was completed in 1903. This annex included a bar room accessed by a storefront with granite pilasters. The new annex was to measure on Broadway and on 32nd Street. A set of restaurants and a cafe opened within the hotel in 1906; at the time, William Taylor and Son were the managers. Work on the planned annex stalled for two years because Martin wished to relocate the Rogers Peet store to the Marbridge Building, which he was constructing two blocks north, before beginning work on the annex. Hardenbergh filed plans for the second annex in October 1907, and the Rogers Peet store moved to the first three stories of the Marbridge Building. The firm of Moran and Jones designed 388 rooms in the new annex, which also included an enlarged main entrance and various public spaces on the lowest stories. at which point daily room rates ranged from $3.50 to $6.00 and up. The hotel also hosted such events as the New York State Bankers' Association's annual meetings, the American Clothing Designers Associations' meetings, and luncheons for local civic group Broadway Association. The Martinique was initially licensed to serve liquor at night, but the city government revoked this license in 1913. The hotel was the first in New York City to obtain a cabaret license; among its performers was vaudevillian Gus Edwards. The Martinique was renamed the McAlpin Annex the same month, and the du Pont family renovated the public rooms into storefronts. The Pennsylvania Drug Company leased a storefront on the southern side of the ground story the same year, within the space originally occupied by the dining room. As a result, a new restaurant was built on the northern side of the ground story. By the 1920s, the entertainment district around Herald Square had largely relocated northward to Times Square. prompting the New York City Council to ban "street exhibitions of a foolhardy character in climbing the outer walks of buildings by human beings". Frank A. Duggan took over as the hotel's manager in May 1928. The 56 East 59th Street Corporation, led by Louis Markel, bought the hotel from the Greeley Square Company that November. Markel headed the Martinique Hotel Corporation, which officially took title to the hotel at the beginning of January 1929. Markel planned to spend $250,000 remodeling the hotel. In August 1930, the media reported that a Chicago-based department store was considering paying $9 million for the Martinique and neighboring structures, then redeveloping the site. However, two companies signed long-term leases for storefronts in the hotel the following month, preventing the department store's development for the time being. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company foreclosed on a mortgage loan for the Martinique in December 1931, claiming that the hotel's owners had not made mortgage payments for two years. A foreclosure auction for the hotel was scheduled for May 1933. The same month, Metropolitan Life bid $500,000, taking ownership of the building and most of the site. Metropolitan Life also took over the previous owners' lease of a parcel of land on Broadway, which had belonged to Mary J. George. Metropolitan Life hired Francis Keally in 1936 to design a renovation of the ground-floor restaurant. and the Broadway cafe and main restaurant received classical decorations and air conditioning. These renovations, along with the ongoing replacement of the Sixth Avenue elevated line with the Sixth Avenue subway nearby, were expected to increase visitation to the area. 1940s to 1960s Metropolitan Life leased the hotel in 1939 to a syndicate headed by Frank W. Kridel. The hotel was undergoing an extensive renovation at the time of the sale, which included a refurbishment of the guest rooms. and the New York State Committee on Discrimination in Housing. Kridel's syndicate bought the hotel in 1944. During World War II, German saboteurs Richard Quirin and Heinrich Harm Heinck, notorious for their involvement in Operation Pastorius, stayed at the Hotel Martinique, against the recommendation of German spy George John Dasch. In September 1947, the Martinique's managers attempted to raise the rent for its permanent guests by 30 percent. The New York Supreme Court initially ruled against the hotel's managers in early 1948, but the Appellate Division subsequently reversed the Supreme Court's ban. Kridel continued to manage the hotel until September 1954, when he sold the building to a syndicate that included Robert Selby; the hotel was then assessed at $1.8 million. Selby's syndicate, Martinique Associates, also included the businessmen Robert Sillins and Al Schwartz. The exterior sign was replaced, one of the dining rooms became a coffee shop, and another dining space became an off-Broadway venue called the Martinique Theatre. Tourism in New York City suffered during the 1960s and 1970s, leading many hotel operators to convert their hotels into apartment buildings. Sources disagree on whether this conversion took place in 1970, or 1973. Initially, the Martinique was a temporary shelter, housing families for only a short period of time. as well as those displaced by fire. while local newspaper Newsday wrote: "The Martinique is a building that reeks of despair and of broken dreams. It is often called a symbol of the city's inability to deal with the homeless population." By December 1985, the Martinique housed over 1,400 children in 389 families; eighteen months later, there were 438 families. According to a 1986 analysis, families stayed at the Martinique for an average of 16 months. The author Jonathan Kozol analyzed conditions at the Martinique for his 1988 book Rachel and Her Children, a study of homeless families. According to Kozol, it cost $2,000 per month for a room housing a family of four and $3,000 per month for a family of six. Children who lived at the hotel had no dedicated play area; The New York Times wrote in 1983 that "the stench of urine and marijuana is everywhere". As a result, the hotel's children often used drugs, shoplifted, and harassed bystanders in Herald Square. In 1986, Manhattan Community Board 5 provided funding to convert the hotel's former ballroom (which had been used as storage space since 1956) into a play area for the children who were housed there. Around the same time, state officials received complaints that families at the Martinique occupied "cramped, subdivided rooms without bathrooms [or] furniture". The city government ultimately fined the hotel's owners in 1988 after finding that the guest rooms had been divided into cubicles of as small as . The hotel lacked in-room telephones, heat, running water, or elevator service, and the facade had become extremely shabby. After the administration of U.S. president Ronald Reagan threatened to withdraw $70 million in federal funding, in 1988, mayor Ed Koch announced that he would close 46 welfare hotels within two years. The hotel had been closed by the end of December 1988, The displaced families were relocated to permanent apartments in other shelters; units in New York City Housing Authority developments; apartments that the city government had renovated; or their own accommodations. The hotel's owners were banned from demolishing the hotel or converting it to another use because of a New York City law that sought to preserve single room occupancy hotels. The owners, who wished to market the space to Koreatown merchants, sought an exemption from the law. The Martinique sat vacant through the mid-1990s, By 1994, the renovation had stalled because of increasing costs, and the owner and lessee were involved in a legal dispute over the Martinique's renovation. For several years, Thurman struggled to obtain financing for the hotel. Workers began restoring the facade, replacing the roof tiles, and rearranging the interior layout. The Martinique reopened in October 1998 as the Holiday Inn Martinique on Broadway. At the time, rooms were being marketed at $215 to $295 per night, in what USA Today described as "a vivid manifestation of New York City's about-face". The hotel was rebranded as the Radisson Hotel Martinique on July 1, 2006, Carlson proposed adding of meeting space in the hotel. In addition, a bistro and a supper club opened within the hotel, supplementing a cafe and an Asian restaurant that already operated within the Martinique. The PGA Gallery at the Radisson Martinique was dedicated in 2011, marking the 95th anniversary of the PGA's establishment in the Martinique. In 2018, the hotel's lessees Herald Hotel Associates decided to instead partner with Hilton Hotels & Resorts, saying that the Radisson partnership was not as profitable as Herald Hotels had desired. The Hilton partnership included a $40 million renovation of the Martinique. The hotel joined Hilton's Curio Collection division on February 1, 2019, and was renamed the Martinique New York on Broadway, Curio Collection by Hilton. COVID-19 closure and sale The hotel was forced to close in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, and the operators laid off many of the hotel's 176 workers. When Thurman died at the end of 2020, the hotel's operators defaulted on their mortgage. By early the following year, Herald Hotel was seeking to sell its lease of the Martinique Hotel, which was scheduled to run for another 68 years. However, the hotel had trouble attracting buyers because the lease was expensive, the building was a landmark, and the hotel required $15 million in repairs to its facade. Burnett Equities president Andy Burnett renegotiated the terms of the land lease following a dinner with the landowner's daughter, and he leased out of empty storefront space to three restaurants. Burnett Equities hired Steven Kratchman Architect, which had been renovating the hotel for the past 15 years, as the hotel's architect of record in 2022. expanding the retail space from six to seven storefronts, as well as completing renovations to the guest rooms and the lower section of the facade. == See also ==