The Gotham Hotel ARCHITECT: Hiss & Weekes DATE: 1902-05 STYLE: Neo-Italian Renaissance

The imposing neo-Italian Renaissance Gotham Hotel (now the Peninsula Hotel) is one of the few structures on Fifth Avenue which recalls the golden age of luxury hotels and the prominent place they occupied in the formation of the city. Rising twenty stories, including a multi-storied rooftop addition, at the southwest corner of West 55th Street and Fifth Avenue, the boldly rendered Gotham is a stylistic counterpoint to its contemporary, the flamboyant Beaux-Arts St. Regis Hotel directly across Fifth Avenue.