St. Nicholas Hotel (New York City) facts for kids
The St. Nicholas Hotel was a very fancy and large hotel in New York City during the mid-1800s. It was located on Broadway in the SoHo area of Manhattan. When it first opened on January 6, 1853, it had 600 rooms. By the end of that same year, it had grown to an amazing 1,000 rooms!
The St. Nicholas Hotel set a new standard for luxury. It was the first building in New York City to cost over $1 million to build. Many people said it became the most important hotel in New York, even more famous than the Astor House.
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What Did the Hotel Look Like?
The St. Nicholas Hotel was located at 507–527 Broadway. It was also on Spring Street and Mercer Street. The main design of the hotel was created by its owner, D. H. Haight, and a hotel expert named Mr. Treadwell. The architects who helped were J. B. Snook and Griffith Thomas.
The hotel building was very wide, stretching 275 feet along Broadway. It was also 200 feet deep on Spring Street. When it first opened, an expansion was already being built. This made the hotel even bigger, taking up a whole city block between Spring Street and Broome Street. The hotel was six stories tall and looked like an Italian palace. It had beautiful white marble columns at its entrance.
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The St. Nicholas Hotel in 1853.
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The barbershop inside the hotel.
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Broadway looking north from the hotel.
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Broadway looking south from the hotel.
Inside the Hotel
The St. Nicholas Hotel cost $1.2 million to build. Another $700,000 was spent to fill it with furniture and decorations. It could host about one thousand guests each week. The hotel had several places to eat. The main dining room on the second floor could serve 400 people at once! There was also a fancy barbershop with a golden domed ceiling.
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The main dining room.
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A menu from 1866.
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The hotel guest register from 1858.
The main lobby had a grand staircase made of white oak. It led guests to the upper floors. A huge chandelier, which cost $1,100, lit up the first landing. This was just one of many expensive lights in the hotel. On the wall above the landing, there was a painting of Sinterklaas (also known as St. Nicholas) putting gifts into Christmas stockings.
The public rooms in the hotel were decorated with dark mahogany and walnut wood. They were lit by gas lights. Gold paint was used a lot throughout the hotel. The window curtains cost $700 each, and the gold-embroidered drapes were $1,000 a pair! Bathrooms had bathtubs covered in carved walnut, and there were many mirrors. The hallways on all floors were heated with steam. Each guest room had its own stove and beds with springs. The hotel even had a grand piano that cost $1,500.
One special room was the bridal suite, decorated with the finest fabrics. The hotel also had a clever system to connect guest rooms to the front desk. Guests could ring bells in their rooms using electricity to call for service.
Important Events at the Hotel
On November 25, 1864, the St. Nicholas Hotel was part of a strange event. Some people, called Confederate saboteurs, tried to set fires in many New York City hotels. They wanted to burn down the city. The St. Nicholas was one of more than a dozen hotels they targeted, including the Astor House and the Metropolitan Hotel.
However, their plan did not work well. The fires mostly went out on their own because there wasn't enough oxygen in the locked rooms where they were set. The technology they used was not very good, and the saboteurs were more focused on escaping quickly.
What Happened to the Hotel?
As the 1800s continued, the St. Nicholas Hotel became less popular. Most tourists started to prefer staying in hotels farther uptown. So, starting in the mid-1870s, parts of the hotel building were changed for other uses.
In 1878, a store took over the southern part of the building. In 1884, another store and warehouse took over the central part. That's when the hotel officially closed its doors for good.
Most of the original hotel building was torn down in the 1900s. However, a small piece of it was saved. This part is now luxury apartments at 521 and 523 Broadway. The upper floors of 521 Broadway still have some of their original fancy window decorations.
Even though the hotel once covered a whole city block, most of it is gone today. Only a small part remains, with stores like Lady Footlocker and The Puma Store on the ground floor. The beautiful outside of the hotel was drawn by artist Frederick Heppenheimer in 1855. This drawing is now kept at the Museum of the City of New York.
Images for kids
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The St. Nicholas Hotel, depicted in an 1855 lithograph by Friedrich Ludwig Heppenheimer
