Former Aberdeen Hotel (now Best Western Manhattan)

History and architecture

The Aberdeen Hotel was built in 1902-04 as an apartment hotel to the designs of architect Harry B. Mulliken for the Old Colony Company, a real estate development firm. At that time, the Herald Square area was a center of entertainment with theaters, restaurants, clubs, and hotels, as well as a maj or transportation hub, while Fifth Avenue in the Thirties was developing as a major shopping district. In 1912, the hotel's suites were subdivided and it began to accept transient guests; during the 1920s, the Aberdeen became one of the first hotels in the city to admit women travelers unaccompanied by men without subjecting them to strict rules.

The brick and limestone structure is a significant example of an ornate, early-twentieth-century, Beaux-arts style apartment hotel building. Notable features include the rusticated stone base, the elaborate sculptural entryway with oversized Atlantes, the projecting central bay of windows with decorative metal spandrel panels, and the broken pediment that surmounts the central bay at the tenth story. The exterior of the hotel remains largely intact. It is now the Best Western Manhattan Hotel.

In late 1901, J.R. Todd, Henry Clay Irons, and Willard Barse incorporated the Old Colony Company, a real estate development firm, with a capitalization of $100,000. On June 3, 1902, Old Colony acquired three lots with masonry houses on West 32nd Street between Fifth Avenue and Broadway from the Alliance Realty Company. In August, architect Harry B. Mulliken filed an application on behalf of the Old Colony Company with the New York City Department of Buildings to construct a twelve-story hotel on the site.

Old Colony's decision to develop its newly-acquired parcel on West 32nd Street as an apartment hotel made economic sense. With Herald Square an entertainment center and its importance as a transportation hub increasing with the proposed Pennsylvania Station, even more people would be going to the area's theaters, restaurants, and hotels. The trade magazine, New York Hotel Record reported in April 1903 that the Old Colony Company has secured financing for its hotel project from the Alliance Realty Company and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company for $207,130 and $400,000, respectively. Construction of the hotel began on May 3, 1903. The 154-room hotel was finished on September 15, 1904. Afterwards the Old Colony Company leased the building to the Thirty-Second Street Hotel Company, which managed the hotel for the next several years.

In the 1920s, the Aberdeen became one of a growing number of transient hotels to admit women travelers unaccompanied by men without subjecting them to strict rules. Most hotels at the time refused to register women arriving alone during nighttime hours, and did not permit registered single female guests to return to the hotel after dark.

Some hotels restricted single women to particular floors only. A number of hotels, such as the Martha Washington (29 East 29th Street) and the Allerton House (130 East 57th Street, now an office building), were open to women only and kept them under even closer supervision. Rider's New York (1923) listed the Aberdeen as a small hotel "catering to the traveler of moderate means, especially women traveling alone."

According to Rider's, only the Aberdeen, the Great Northern Hotel, at 118 West 57th Street, and the Hotel Willard, at 252 West 76th Street treated men and women as equals.

The exterior of the Aberdeen Hotel has remained largely intact. The building's original stoop was replaced with a smaller one in 1914, storefronts were installed on the first floor in 1933, and the cornice was altered prior to 1938. Additional interior alterations took place in 1938-41 and 1953. Since 1978, the hotel has been owned and operated by the Apple Core chain and its affiliates. Apple Core licensed the Best Western name in 1995 and the hotel has been operated as the Best Western Manhattan since that time.