Astor House

Competition and decline[edit]

The success of the Astor House invited competition. The 1853 St Nicholas Hotel on Broadway at Broome Street was built for $1 million and offered the innovation of central heating that circulated warmed air through registers to every room. It was said to have ended the Astor House's preeminence in New York hostelry.^[15] The Metropolitan Hotel, opened in 1852 just north of the St Nicholas at Prince Street, was equally luxurious. But the new hotel to put all others in the shade was the Fifth Avenue Hotel facing Madison Square.^[16]


In the face of its competitors, by the early 1870s the Astor House was considered old-fashioned and unappealing, and was principally used by businessmen. Still, it remained such a seemingly permanent fixture of New York, that it was included in a fantasy short story by J. A. Mitchell, The Last American, set in the far future, when Persian explorers in the ruins of New York come upon "an upturned slab" inscribed "Astor House": "I pointed it out to Nofuhl and we bent over it with eager eyes ... 'The inscription is Old English,' he said. '"House" signified a dwelling, but the word "Astor" I know not. It was probably the name of a deity, and here was his temple'".^[17]


The south section was demolished in 1913^[18] in order to construct the Vesey Street tunnel for the Broadway subway line, which runs beneath the site; and Bogardus' luncheon pavilion went with it.^[19] Vincent Astor redeveloped the site at 217 Broadway as the Astor House Building, a modest seven stories tall, in 1915–1916.^[20] The rest was demolished in 1926 and the site rebuilt as the Transportation Building, which was designed by York and Sawyer with Art Deco details.