Hotel Shelton (New York Marriott East Side)

In the 1920s, when Manhattan was booming and no one could imagine the economic crash a few years ahead, James T. Lee, a real estate investor (and future grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy) planned to build a large, elegant men-only hotel that would provide bachelors with a respectable residence. He commissioned Arthur Loomis Harmon, who would later become well-known for his work on the Empire State Building. The result was a 31-story, 1200 room hotel, which was billed as the tallest skyscraper in the world.

Wanting a respectable, comfortable residence for single men, Lee's hotel included a bowling alley, a swimming pool, squash courts, and an infirmary. For all of its elegant features, however, the Hotel Shelton apparently failed to attract a sufficient number of single men to be profitable and in 1924, shortly after opening, Lee revised his men-only policy and opened the hotel to women and families.

Given its remarkable size, the Hotel Shelton was bound to attract plenty of attention, and it did. Beyond its size, however, the hotel's residents and guests often attracted attention. In 1926, the actress Pauline Armitrage, who lived at the Shelton, jumped to her death from her suite on the fourteenth floor. Later the same year, escape artists Harry Houdini had himself enclosed in a coffin-shaped box which was then submerged in the Shelton's elegant swimming pool. He remained submerged in the air-tight coffin for 90 minutes.

But the hotel's most famous resident was arguably Georgia O'Keeffe, who moved into the property with her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, in 1925. The couple initially moved into a suite on the twenty-eighth floor, but shortly moved to a suite on the thirtieth floor. In her studio high above the city, O'Keeffe had excellent views over Manhattan, and both the views and the hotel itself would feature in her work. A number of her paintings of the New York skyline are focused on the view she had from her suite at the Shelton. At least 25 of O'Keeffe's drawings and paintings of city views were made from her suite which included her studio at the Shelton. O'Keeffe and Stieglitz lived in the hotel for twelve years, until she permanently relocated to New Mexico in the 1930s.

In the 1940s, playwright Tennessee Williams once lived at the Shelton, which, by the postwar years, developed a reputation as a gay-friendly location and was featured in the gay guide Gaedicker's Sodom-on-Hudson, which was the first guidebook to gay life in the city. The hotel's bar, swimming pool, and gymnasium were all part of the gay community's places of safe spaces through the 1970s.

By the late twentieth century, the Shelton was in a pronounced state of decline and at one point in the 1970s, it was home to just eleven permanent residents. Just as some developers considered demolishing the historic building and replacing it with a modern office building, the Marriott company acquired the building in 1990 and began an extensive renovation program.

Gray , Christopher . Mr. Houdini, Your Box is Ready , New York Times . March 26th 2009. Accessed October 26th 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/realestate/29scapes.html.

Trucco, Terry . The New York Hotel You've Never Heard of That Inspired Georgia O'Keeffe's Skyscraper Paintings , Overnight New York . August 7th 2019. Accessed October 26th 2020. https://overnightnewyork.com/hotel-history/the-new-york-hotel-youve-never-heard-of-that-inspired-georgia-okeeffes-famous-skyscraper-and-cityscape-paintings/.

Sargent , Sarah. Georgia O'Keeffee Residence at the Hotel Shelton , NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project . Accessed October 26th 2020. https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/georgia-okeeffe-residence-at-the-hotel-shelton/.

Miller , Tom . The 1924 Shelton Hotel--49th and Lexington , Daytonian in Manhattan. August 12th 2010. Accessed October 26th 2020. http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2010/08/1924-shelton-hotel-49th-and-lexington.html.