The Ansonia
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The Ansonia is a building in the Upper West Side of New York, New York in the United States, located at 2109 Broadway. It was originally built as a hotel by William Earle Dodge Stokes, the Phelps-Dodge copper heir and share holder in the Ansonia Clock Company, and was named after his grandfather industrialist Anson Greene Phelps. In 1899, Stokes commissioned architect Paul E. Duboy to build the greatest and grandest hotel in Manhattan, New York.
History
The Ansonia was a residential hotel, residents lived in luxurious apartments with parlors, libraries, and formal dining rooms that are often round or oval shaped, and multiple bedrooms. Apartments feature sweeping views north and south along Broadway, high ceilings, elegant moldings, and bay windows. The Ansonia also had a few small units, one bedroom, parlor and bath; these lacked kitchens. There was a central kitchen and serving kitchens on every floor, so that the residents could enjoy the services of professional chefs while dining in their own apartments. Besides the usual array of tearooms, restaurants, and a grand ballroom, the Ansonia had Turkish baths and a lobby fountain with live seals.
Erected between 1899 and 1904, it was the first air conditioned hotel in New York. The building has an eighteen story steel frame structure. The exterior is decorated in the Beaux-Art style with a Parisian style Mansard roof. A striking architectural feature is the round corner towers or turrets. Unusually for a Manhattan building, the Ansonia features an open stairwell that sweeps up to a huge, domed skylight. The interior corridors may be the widest in the city. The building has the unusual feature of possessing a cattle elevator, this enabled milk cows to live on the roof.
It has had many special guests, as the baseball champion Babe Ruth, the writer Theodore Dreiser, Arturo Toscanini the composer Igor Stravinsky, and the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, who chose this Hotel because of its thick walls. For several years Stokes kept some farm animals on the building's roof next to his personal apartment.
By mid-century, the grand apartments had mostly been divided into studios and one-bedroom units almost all of which retained their original arciitectural detail.
After a short debate in the 1960s, a proposal to demolish the building was fought off by its many musical and artistic residents.
In 1992 the Ansonia was converted to a condominium apartment building with 430 apartments. By 2007 most of the rent-controlled tenants had moved out, and the small apartments were sold to buyers who purchased clusters of small apartments and threw them together to recreate the grand apartments of the building's glory days, with carefully restored Beaux Arts detail. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Wachovia Bank branch on the ground level plays a documentary covering the history of the Ansonia. The short video is played in the front of the entrance in the bank.
Movies, Books, Scandals and Stars
- The Ansonia housed the famous gay sex club, Continental Baths (later changed to Plato's Retreat), in its basement during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Bette Midler famously started her singing career at the Continental Baths.
- The Ansonia is said to have been the inspiration for the Hotel Gloriana in the Saul Bellow novel Seize The Day, although the Ansonia itself is mentioned as visible from the Gloriana. The basement bathhouse is just an ordinary pool and steambath facility, not a sex club.
- The Ansonia was also used as the apartment building Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh were supposed to have lived in the 1992 film Single White Female. The Apartment scenes were filmed in a studio but the stairwell scenes were actually filmed in the hotel.
- In The Sunshine Boys, Walter Matthau lived in The Ansonia.
- The 1919 Black Sox Scandal is said to have been conceived in front of the Ansonia.
- "It looks like a baroque palace from Prague or Munich enlarged a hundred times, with towers, domes, huge swells of metal gone green from exposure, iron fretwork and festoons. Black television antennae are densely planted on its round summits. Under the changes of weather it may look like marble or sea water, black as slate in the fog, white as tufa in sunlight," observed novelist Saul Bellow in his 1956 book, "Seize The Day."
- Willie Sutton the bank robber, was arrested at Child's Restaurant in the Ansonia.
- The characters in the HBO show Don't say a Word live in the Ansonia. http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3494
- Famous former residents include Geraldine Farrar, Feodor Chaliapin, Lauritz Melchior, (who Selwen maintained "practiced archery in the 110-foot corridors"), Ezio Pinza, Lily Pons, musicians Arthuro Toscanini, Igor Stravinksy, Mischa Elman, Yehudi Menuhin and impresarios Florenz Ziegfeld and Sol Hurok, authors Theodore Dreiser, Cornell Woolrich, and Elmer Rice, athletes Jack Dempsey and Babe Ruth.
- Photo of Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey in Ruth's apartment at the Ansonia, http://www.seth.com/coll_photographs_20.html
Ghosts
The most common story has to do with the elevators. People claim that they have seen an elevator door open to reveal two couples, the men wearing tail coats and top hats, the ladies dressed for the evening in Edwardian style. They are said to invite you to come with them to "the party." It is said that when the door closes and the elevator goes up.
Some residents claim to have witnessed a party taking place on the seventeenth floor. This was built as a floor of servants quarters, but it is now a residential floor with interestingly shaped apartments, frequently with porthole-style windows and fabulous views. The ghosts attending the party are said to be very friendly.
Education
Ansonia is assigned to schools in the New York City Department of Education.
Ansonia is zoned to P.S. 87 William Sherman. The Ansonia is unzoned for middle school; residents may contact Region 10 to determine the middle school assignments.
See also
External links
- Condominium home page
- History and pictures
- Images and history at nyc-architecture.com
- Picture at New York Skyscrapers
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