Broadway and 43rd Street.
Broadway and 43rd St. taken from above. Photograph shows the Hotel Astor, and its rooftop garden is visible. On the streets, streetcars and automobiles drive. Billboards advertise Lucky Strike Cigarrettes, Pepsodent toothpaste, Chevrolet, and other products.
Museum of the City of New YorkHotel Astor, 1931.
Designed by architects Clinton & Russell, the grand Beaux-Arts hotel was completed in 1904. The hotel was the brainchild of William C. Muschenheim, a German businessman and restaurateur. With the financial backing of the wealthy and real estate successful Waldorf family, he constructed an opulent hotel that had a Louis XV–decorated ballroom among other, lounges, restaurants, and massive roof garden. A 1920s New York Times article said this about the rooftop venue, “There is the open-air dancing floor and the restaurant is conspicuous for dangling ferns and trailing vines. A unique feature of the restaurant is the gabled-glass roof over which flows a miniature Niagara.”
The grand hotel was demolished in 1967 and replaced by an office tower (today known as One Astor Plaza).
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