In all candor, I choose to book a room at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City for one reason: Madison Square Garden is right across the street, making this hotel perfect for an overnight stay after a concert. There is second reason to book a visit, though: affordability. Not long after I enter the Hotel Pennsylvania’s lobby, I find a third: its storied past.
Photo credit: M. Ciavardini.
Welcome to the Hotel Pennsylvania
There’s something about the vast, vaguely art-deco-ish public area that reminds me of rainy nights and fedoras, an East Coast version of a Raymond Chandler novel featuring private detective Philip Marlowe and a good mystery. An easy escape rests just across the street via the railway. A constant stream of people comes and goes. The atmosphere makes me remember an older New York, a seedier era in the city’s history before Mayor Rudy Giuliani got rid of the squeegee men.
I stand in a hotel lobby that has seen better times, and, yet, I cannot help but wonder what ghosts this hotel holds.
With some marketing cunning, the Pennsylvania Railroad built the Hotel Pennsylvania not long after World War I. After all, people coming to town need someplace to stay. And the kind railroad folks made sure there was plenty of room right by their very own Penn Station. Waiting in line, I ponder all of the marketing that went into pushing this place. Even the phone number resonates, although it may not make sense to more youthful adventurers. Just dial Pennsylvania 6-5000.
The Largest Hotel in the World and It’s Close to Madison Square Garden
When the Hotel Pennsylvania opened in 1919, the New York Times announced it as the largest hotel in the world, featuring 2,200 rooms and an equal number of baths. Its size makes me understand the 20-minute check-in line I endure as all too many of us need to get into a room before going out for the evening (even though the room count today is closer to 1,700). Judging from the size of the suitcases being wheeled past the ropes of the queue, some visitors plan to stay for more than a day. I wonder what brings them here and what made them choose this place. Surely it is something more than a concert across the street.
I sense the history of this century-old hotel as I edge toward the front desk having tried, and failed, to coax the auto check-in kiosk to give me a room key. Who has been through this place?
I imagine that the New York City of 1919, just over the first World War, was humming, ready to get back to making money and growing larger.
Prohibition slowed down the party a bit, but not entirely.
In 1921, two doctors apparently indulged in some verbal jousting while under the influence at the Hotel Pennsylvania, their language so abusive and profane their activities were written up in the Times. “Two Doctors Arraigned,” New York Times, May 25, 1921, at 16.
Photo credit: M. Ciavardini.
Moonshine and Monkey Business at this Madison Square Garden Hotel
The general ban on the sale of alcohol began to wear on people, it seems. In 1923, 11 men were arrested in room 1231 over something having to do with alleged bribery of government officials they wanted to “lay low” during an investigation. “Swears to a Plot to Kill Witnesses,” N.Y. Times, July 22, 1926, at 4.
I am starting to like the mystery and allure of the Hotel Pennsylvania.
American royalty stayed here on occasion. The presence of the daughter of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. just after her wedding merited mention in the Times in 1925. She and her new husband, David Meriwether Milton, managed to dine at the hotel without being recognized. “Milton and Bride Sail on Honeymoon,” N.Y. Times, May 17, 1925, at 1.
Two years later, the ‘Palestine soccer team’ known as the Maccabees (fierce warriors meriting biblical mention) would be presented to reporters. Half of the proceeds from their soccer tour in the United States “would go to Palestine to be added to the sum that is expended annually in buying more land for the Jews,” the New York Times reported. “Palestine Eleven to Aid Homeland,” N.Y. Times, June 3, 1927, at 18.
What’s not to like about a place that accommodates athletes, heiresses, bootleggers, drunken health care practitioners, and concertgoers equally?
Most amusing to me were the appearances of members of various dog clubs (fairly logical, given that the Westminster Kennel Club show takes place across the street). I loved learning about the presence of many Pomeranians in the rooftop garden. Even more fun was the arrival in 1935 of a fugitive monkey on the loose in the lobby. “Monkey Flees Into Hotel Pennsylvania; Caught by Taxi Driver in Exciting Chase,” N.Y. Times, Sept. 1, 1935, at 17. He was just one of an “epidemic of escaped monkeys”—just days before the arrival of a monkey at the Hotel Pennsylvania, 41 Burmese monkeys had escaped from the roof of a garage at 15th Street and the East River.
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A Strange Event at the Hotel Statler
I don’t know the fate of that monkey in the lobby, but the world eventually learned of the sad ending of one seemingly troubled guest: in 1953, Frank Olson died after leaving the hotel via a 10th-floor window. By that time, the Hotel Pennsylvania had a new, and, it turns out, temporary, name: the Hotel Statler. Initially, Olson’s death appeared to be a suicide, one that did not particularly make sense, but then, how many suicides do?
How Olson ended up going out the window one night is a bit of a convoluted story. A biochemist from the Washington, D.C.-vicinity who worked for the federal government, he shared a room with an apparent co-worker. Sometime during the night, he went out the window of what was then numbered room 1018A.
Decades passed before his family learned that Olson apparently had been an unknowing participant in an experiment with LSD; it had been administered to him by two Central Intelligence Agency employees. Seymour M. Hersh, “Family Plans to Sue C.I.A. Over Suicide Drug Test,” N.Y. Times, July 10, 1975, at 1, 18. The CIA seems never to have really gotten around to explaining to Olson’s family that it had been conducting experiments with the drug on unwitting victims.
The Cold War Comes to Town
The United States, then fully entrenched in an anti-communist approach to the universe (accused spies for the Soviet Union, the Rosenbergs, were executed in 1953), became very interested in studying and using biological weapons around that time. Intelligence officers also became intrigued by human behavior. Whether and to what extent Frank Olson knew of and/or opposed the use of so-called ‘germ warfare’ on actual battlefields (say, Korea) seems to be a matter of some disagreement, as is his general mindset at the time of his death (did he want to leave government service? was he depressed? was he pushed?).
Much is explained in a docudrama mini-series, Wormwood, which explores all sorts of inappropriate government activities. One point made in the Errol Morris film is that Olson, a biochemist involved with various experiments on animals, didn’t like to see the monkeys in those experiments die. Actor Peter Sarsgaard plays Olson in the piece.
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Photo credit: M. Ciavardini.
Clean Room, Well-Functioning Elevators, and a Throwback to the Past
The Hotel Pennsylvania certainly has an interesting back story, but its present is compelling for my purposes. I stay in room 839 and am charmed by the odd door, a portion of which remains from the original 1919 version. Back in the day, the Hotel Pennsylvania inaugurated an unusual feature that allowed laundry and other items to be passed from guest to staff via these doors without any direct interaction. Guests’ needs, hotel managers proclaimed, would take precedence.
That’s an approach I can still buy into today. I chose this place for its convenience, find it sufficiently functional and clean for my purposes, like that the elevator banks manage to transport me relatively quickly for a building of this size, and definitely appreciate having a bed to crawl into after a musical performance at Madison Square Garden. The only aspect of my visit that does not particularly charm me is that breakfast must be taken around the corner at a very crowded Café R. But it is with some wistfulness that I check out of the Hotel Pennsylvania, leaving its sort-of-strange past, and that of this city’s, behind me.
Hotel Pennsylvania, 401 Seventh Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10001.
—Lori Tripoli
Lori Tripoli is the editor and publisher of BashfulAdventurer.com. She writes about travel, business, and sustainability.
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What a cool place to stay! I love a place with history. Especially when it’s also affordable and in the middle of the NYC action! Happy travels!
Thank you!
I haven’t visited New York yet but a location near Madison Square Gardens is really ideal. I can’t believe you were able to find out so much about its incredible history!! I’d love to be visiting when the dogs from the Westminster Kennel Club are there!
That would be so much fun to see the dogs in the hotel.
An interesting read, thanks. If/when I visit NY I will put this on my list.
Interesting read! I used to walk past the Hotel Pennsylvania daily when I worked nearby, but never went inside. I love to hear the history of the various buildings of New York.
I had no idea the Hotel Pennsylvania had such an interesting history. It makes me want to go there again.