Grand Hotel

History and architecture

The Grand Hotel, an urbane marble structure crowned with a handsome mansard roof, is a sophisticated example of the French Second Empire style. Built for Elias S. Higgins, an important manufacturer and vendor of carpets, it was designed by Henry Engelbert in 1863 at the beginning of a period in New York's history that transformed Broadway between Madison and Herald Squares into the heart of a glittering entertainment district.

Just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War when Madison Square was an exclusive residential quarter, most hotels, restaurants, theaters and stores of any distinction were still below Houston Street. However, with the end of the • War and the recovery of the economy from the general depression that followed it, the relentless northward growth of the city resumed and a number of fashionable hotels opened near Madison Square along Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The Albemarle, the St. James, the Victoria, the Gilsey House, and the Grand all located in the area and each attempted to exceed the other in opulence arid luxury.

The great department stores moved "uptown" to Broadway and Sixth Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets, creating an unparalleled shopping center known as "Ladies' Mile." Theaters also left downtown and began to congregate north of 23rd Street. At one time, the three blocks along Broadway between West 28th and 31st Streets boasted six theaters including: Daly's, Weber & Field's and Wallack's Thirtieth Street Theater, all featuring the finest musical-variety shows of the day. So many music publishers had opened their offices on West 28th Street near Broadway that the cacophony of their pianos—likened to the clashing of tin pans—gave the sobriquet "Tin Pan Alley" to the street.

West of Sixth Avenue, the side streets, bordered with respectable brownstones, became notorious for the diversions they offered the "nabobs" frequenting theaters and hotels. They housed the city's posh brothels and swank gambling club Between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, West 27th Street once contained 27 of the district's "seraglios." So infamous had the area became as a source of municipal corruption, particularly in the West 30s, that Inspector Alexander "Clubber" Williams, on being appointed to the West 30th Street precinct, was able to say with impunity, "I've had nothing but chuck steak for a long time and now I'm going to get a little of the tenderloin.

"4 From then on the section was known as the Tenderloin—a section that offered the best and the worst that the city possessed, section with Stephen Crane on West 23rd Street and "Clubber" Williams on West 30th, a section with newly wed Edith Wharton at 23 West 25th Street and the madam, Kate Woods, at 105 West 25th Street entertaining amid lush surroundings that only the Mauve Decades could provide, a section glaring with rich and dramatic contrasts that only New York could produce.

The Grand Hotel, with its white marble facade, was a prominent feature of the area until the theater district shifted north to Times Square at the turn of the century and the section became part of the garment district. The Grand's former days of elegance were eclipsed and it became a second-rate residency hotel. But it and the Gilsey House still remain on Broadway to recall that colorful era of the city's past.