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King's Crown Hotel · 420 West 116th Street
King's Crown Hotel
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420 West 116th Street. Sesrun Club club for nurses.

1905

King's Crown Hotel

420 West 116th Street. Sesrun Club club for nurses.

IMAGE DATE1905
FromMuseum of the City of New York logoMuseum of the City of New York

King's Crown Hotel, ca. 1905.

Built in 1909 to the plans of the firm of Naville & Bagge, the Beaux-Arts structure was original the Hotel Westminster, and later the King's Crown Hotel, where some residents lived long term. In the 1930s the hotel was home to both physicists Leó Szilárd and Enrico Fermi. They met accidentally in the lobby of their building in 1939 and that encounter would go on to produce what one science writer described as "one of the more colorful - and contentious - partnerships in the history of science." The partnership played a major role in the Manhattan Project and the eventual creation of the atomic bomb.

The building was purchased by Columbia University in the early 1980s and is now a residence for law school students.

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