The Ansonia
The Ansonia | |
---|---|
Basic data | |
Place: | New York City , United States |
Construction time : | 1899-1904 |
Renovation: | 1992 |
Status : | Built |
Architectural style : | Beaux-Arts |
Architect : | Paul E. Duboy |
Use / legal | |
Usage : | Apartments |
Apartments : | 430 |
Client : | William Earl Dodge Stokes |
Technical specifications | |
Floors : | 18th |
The Ansonia was a hotel residence in New York City when it opened in 1904 . Since the restoration in 1992, the building has been converted into condominiums. At 2109 Broadway , the building is between 73rd and 74th Streets. The builder William Earl Dodge Stokes named it after his grandfather Anson Green Phelps .
background
At the end of the 1880s, William Earl Dodge Stokes commissioned the French architect Paul E. Duboy to build a residence hotel based on the European model. It had previously taken him several years to buy the property, which consisted of 22 parcels, together. Before that there was an orphanage on the property. Originally it was supposed to be the tallest building in Manhattan with 20 floors. Instead, the decision was made to stop building after 17 floors. After the official opening on April 19, 1904, the building comprised 340 suites with a little more than 1200 rooms, with an area of just over 51,000 m². The construction costs amounted to about 3 million US dollars . In Joseph Gill-Martin, the hotel had its own curator, who was responsible for over 600 paintings. There were also several restaurants, bars, what was then the largest indoor pool in the world and other shops.
Residents
The most famous residents include Teresa Stratas , Eleanor Steber , Geraldine Farrar , Fjodor Chaliapin , Ezio Pinza , Lily Pons and Lauritz Melchior . In addition to the artist Clemens Weiss , musicians such as Arturo Toscanini , Igor Fjodorowitsch Stravinsky , Mischa Elman , Yehudi Menuhin , Impresario Florenz Ziegfeld and Sol Hurok , authors such as Theodore Dreiser , Cornell Woolrich and Elmer Rice also lived here. It was also the first home of baseball player Babe Ruth when he moved to New York. Boxer Jack Dempsey and mobster Arnold Rothstein and actors like Angelina Jolie , Natalie Portman , Eric McCormack and Clarice Blackburn also lived there.
Incidents
- In the early days there was even a small farm on the roof with over 500 chickens, six cows and a bear, which was supposed to offer fresh eggs and milk for the residents every day. The farm was closed by the health department in 1907.
- Chicago White Sox baseball player Chick Gandil lived in the building in 1919. According to Eliot Asinof and his book Eight Men Out , which was later filmed as Eight Men and a Scandal , Gandil is said to have received seven teammates there in order to lose the World Series in 1919 on purpose. The incident later went down in baseball history as the Black Sox Scandal .
- Bank robber Willie Sutton was arrested in February 1952 at Childs Restaurant , a restaurant in Ansonia.
see more
Mansard roof of the Ansonia
Film and literature
- In the film Hannah and Her Sisters , directed by Woody Allen , the Ansonia appears as one of the favorite buildings of the architect David Tulchin.
- In the film Die Sunny Boys , written by Neil Simon , the character Willy Clark, played by Walter Matthau , lives in the Ansonia.
- In the film Seduction of a Stranger , reporter Rowena Price, played by Halle Berry , lives in a “professionally decorated 4 million condominium in the lavish Ansonia building on the Upper West Side”.
- In the comedy film Uptown Girls , Molly Gunn, played by Brittany Murphy , lives at Ansonia.
- In the films Say No Words , with Michael Douglas and Sean Bean , and The Super-Ex , with Uma Thurman and Luke Wilson , the building is also the setting.
- The television series 666 Park Avenue , produced in 2012, takes place in the building, where it is called The Drake and has been moved from the Upper West Side to the Upper East Side .
- The building served as a template for the fictional Balmoral building in Jed Rubenfeld's novel The Interpretation of Murder .
- The Ansonia plays a central role as the mythical gangster castle in Jerome Charyn's eleventh volume in the crime novel series about Isaac Sidel "Under the Eye of God".
- In the series How I Met Your Mother , the character Zoey Pierson lives at Ansonia.
- The 1992 film Female, Single, Young Seeks… , for the most part, takes place in Ansonia.
literature
- Steven Gaines: The Building of the Upper West Side , New York Magazine , May 21, 2005
- Vitra Design Museum (Ed.): Together! The new architecture of the collective . Ruby Press, ISBN 978-3-945852-15-6 (exhibition catalog).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ 'Perfect Stranger': Not Thrilled To Meet You , washingtonpost.com
Coordinates: 40 ° 46 ′ 48.6 " N , 73 ° 58 ′ 56.2" W.