The Hotel Claridge was a 16-story building on

Times Square Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is formed by the junction of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street. Together with adjacent ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, at the southeast corner of

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

and 44th Street. Originally known as the Hotel Rector, it was built of brick in the

Beaux-arts style Beaux-Arts architecture ( , ) was the academic architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, particularly from the 1830s to the end of the 19th century. It drew upon the principles of French neoclassicism, but also incorporat ...

in 1910–1911. The 14-story building had 240 guest rooms and 216,000 square feet of space."Claridge Hotel in Times Square is Acquired by Douglas Leigh". The New York Times, May 21, 1964. p. 57. It operated for 61 years until the building was demolished in 1972 and replaced with

1500 Broadway 1500 Broadway is a skyscraper located in Times Square, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The skyscraper was completed in 1972 by Arlen Realty & Development Corporation, with a height of , and has 34 floors. 1500 Broadway is famous for the seven ...

History

The Hotel Rector was established by

George Rector George Rector 878-1947was a restaurateur, raconteur and food authority who wrote several cookbooks in the 1920s and '30s. He appeared on radio on the Columbia Broadcasting System in ''Dine with George Rector''Diamond Jim Brady James Buchanan Brady (August 12, 1856 – April 13, 1917), also known as Diamond Jim Brady, was an American businessman, financier and philanthropist of the Gilded Age. Early life and family Brady was born in New York City to an Irish immig ...

and

Cornelius Vanderbilt III Brigadier General Cornelius "Neily" Vanderbilt III (September 5, 1873 – March 1, 1942) was an American military officer, inventor, engineer, and yachtsman. He was a member of the Vanderbilt family. Early life Born in New York City to Cornelius ...

. The timing of his new venture was unfortunate, because as the hotel was being developed, a popular

play was released, called ''

The Girl from Rector's ''The Girl from Rector's'' is a play written by Paul M. Potter. The play is a sex farce involving several couples in a tangle of adulterous affairs, and was considered indecent by many critics, as well as some government officials who censored p ...

''. The play was considered indecent by many critics and gave the Rector's name an unsavory reputation. Rector held the play responsible when he declared his new hotel bankrupt in May 1913. The new owners wanted a new name to escape the stigma, so the Hotel Rector became the Hotel Claridge in 1913. The new name evoked the exclusive

Claridge's Claridge's is a 5-star hotel at the corner of Brook Street and Davies Street in Mayfair, London. It has long-standing connections with royalty that have led to it sometimes being referred to as an "annexe to Buckingham Palace". Claridge's Hote ...

of London. Although they were no longer using the old name, the new management refused to allow use of the Rector's brand for another restaurant. Rector successfully sued to regain use of his own name. The

American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...

(ASCAP) was founded at the Hotel Claridge on February 13, 1914. In 1923, the hotel was purchased by real estate investor Benjamin Winter, Sr. for $3 million. In May 1964 it was bought by Douglas Leigh Inc. for an unspecified sum. Leigh indicated he would turn the hotel into a commercial building, with stores, a restaurant and exhibit space on the lower floors and showrooms, offices and meeting rooms on the upper floors. One of the most enduring images of Times Square is the “Camel Man”, who blew cigarette smoke rings around the clock from 1941 to 1966 from a billboard mounted on the Hotel Claridge.

Demolition and rebuilding

The building was razed in 1972 to make way for a 33-story office tower. National General Corporation based their eastern operations in the building and also incorporated a movie theater into the building, the first new movie theater in Times Square for more than 30 years, which opened December 12, 1972, with the premiere of '' The Poseidon Adventure''. The theater added a screen in 1982 and closed in 1998. The first and second floors are occupied by

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

Times Square Studios Times Square Studios (TSS) is an American television studio owned by The Walt Disney Company, located on the southeastern corner of West 44th Street and Broadway in Times Square, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The studio is best known as the ...

, home to the ''

Good Morning America ''Good Morning America'' (often abbreviated as ''GMA'') is an American morning television program that is broadcast on ABC. It debuted on November 3, 1975, and first expanded to weekends with the debut of a Sunday edition on January 3, 1993. Th ...

'' television program.

In popular culture

In the film, ''The Hustler'' (1961), with Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman, the pool scenes were shot in the Hotel Claridge bar. In the film ''

Midnight Cowboy ''Midnight Cowboy'' is a 1969 American drama (film and television), drama film, based on the 1965 Midnight Cowboy (novel), novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy. The film was written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger, and stars ...

'' (1969), Joe Buck (

Jon Voight Jonathan Vincent Voight (; born December 29, 1938) is an American actor. He came to prominence in the late 1960s with his Academy Award–nominated performance as Joe Buck, a would-be gigolo, in ''Midnight Cowboy'' (1969). During the 1970s, he ...

) lodges in the Hotel Claridge at the beginning of his stay in New York City (but he is soon expelled due to failure to pay).

References

External links

Images of the Hotel Rector/Hotel Claridge
{{Broadway (Manhattan) 1911 establishments in New York City Beaux-Arts architecture in New York City Broadway (Manhattan) Buildings and structures demolished in 1972 Defunct hotels in Manhattan Demolished hotels in New York City Hotel buildings completed in 1911 Hotels in Manhattan Times Square buildings