Commemorated today by a bench on Broadway that bears a small plaque funded as a memorial to the former New York landmark, Hotel Mayflower stood for nearly eight decades at this location before being demolished and replaced by 15 Central Park West Hotel Mayflower was a 15-story building that stretched between W. 61st and W. 62nd Streets. The structure was one of seven buildings on this street that were designed by the prolific architect Emery Roth between 1926 and 1930. The apartment hotel was constructed in 1926 and overlooked Central Park which is across the street. Hotel Mayflower was listed in the New York and National Registers in 1982, but by that time, the aging, 365-room hotel was being targeted by real estate developers who hoped to demolish the structure. The property was sold to developers in 2004. After spending millions to buy out and relocate the last remaining tenants in rent-controlled apartments on the upper floors, the building was demolished to build the high-rise condominium building that now occupies the space, with the entrance at 15 Central Park West.
Completed in 1931, this Art Deco skyscraper at 25 Central Park West was named is a block-wide with twin thirty-story towers. The building's name was a nod to the Century Theater, a grand venue that opened at this location in 1909 and was renowned for its architecture but notorious for its poor acoustics and demolished in 1930. In keeping with Art Deco styles, the top of each tower features rounded geometric elements. The curtain walls of yellow brick are interspersed with bands of brown brick, giving the building a tapestry-like appearance. The Century was listed in the New York and National Registers of Historic Places in 1982 as part of the Central Park West Historic District. The building has been the Century Condominiums since the 1980s.
Constructed from 1909 to 1911, Harperly Hall is a U-shaped apartment building of 11 stories overlooking Central Park. The main entrance faces south onto W. 64th Street. The brown brick building with a limestone base and terra cotta trim was the first apartment building in the Central Park West area to be organized as a co-operative and offered 76 units when it opened. The structure has been listed in the New York and National Registers of Historic Places since 1982 as part of the Central Park West Historic District. The building is still a residential co-op. The music icon Madonna lived in the building until she sold her apartment in 2013.
The highrise facing Central Park at 50 Central Park West is the Prasada, built in 1904 as an apartment building with large apartments of eight to ten rooms. The mansard roof, which was barely still in style when the building was constructed, was removed in 1919 and the 12th story was rebuilt with a masonry facade and a new roof. The Prasada Apartments was listed in the National Register in 1982 as part of the Central Park West Historic District. The building has been a residential co-op since 1973 and now contains about 50 units.
The eighteen-story apartment building at 55 Central Park West was built from 1929 to 1930 in the Art Deco style of architecture. Since the 1984 release of the movie Ghostbusters, the stately high-rise building is sometimes called "The Shandor" by residents and visitors, the building's fictional name from the hit 1984 movie, Fifty-five Central Park West was designed by Schwartz & Gross, one of the most prolific architectural firms represented along Central Park West. The building is now run as a co-op and holds 109 units. It is listed as part of the National Register's Central Park West Historic District.
The West 67th Street Artists' Colony Historic District consists of eight buildings, the most prominent of which is the Hotel d'Artistes. The district is the only concentration of artists' studios and apartments in Manhattan. Built in the early 1900s, the buildings were designed with artists in mind, and many feature larger than normal windows, to allow in natural light. The largest of the buildings, the Hotel d'Artistes, was actually never a hotel; it was designed with hotel-like amenities to get around building height restrictions for apartments.
This building contains French-American artist Marcel Duchamp's first New York Studio. In this specific studio, Duchamp made one of his most infamous pieces, known as 'Fountain'. The Fountain itself is just a porcelain urinal turned on it's side, signed "R. Mutt 1917". Despite it's appearance, the piece is widely cited as a landmark piece in Avant grade art. Outside of the Fountain, Duchamp is renowned for his massive contributions, and revolutionary developments into painting, sculpture, and multiple styles of art such as surrealism, and Dadaism in the New York art scene.
Manhattan's First Battery Armory was built between 1901 and 1904 and served as an armory until 1977. At that time, the building was renovated and began to be used as a television studio for ABC. Though the building's interior was extensively renovated, much of its castellated exterior remained intact. In 2012, the television studio was demolished and the building was renovated for use as commercial office space. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a New York City Landmark.
Located in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Manhattan, Lincoln Center is the quintessential home for the performing arts. Lincoln Center covers more than sixteen acres and is home to the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, New York Philharmonic, and more. John D. Rockefeller III spearheaded the creation of Lincoln Center, looking to renew the deteriorating Lincoln Square neighborhood. Rockefeller was also the chief fundraiser, bringing in $185 million for the formation. Lincoln Center is now one of the most famous performing arts centers in the world, bringing in more than five million people from all over the globe and from all walks of life in every year.
This branch of the New York Public Library is part of the Lincoln Center complex and is home of one of the world's largest collections of library materials related to the performing arts. These materials may be viewed free of charge and some may be checked out to library card holders. The library also offers special programs such as special exhibitions of materials from its collections, lectures performances, and traveling exhibits. The library is located near the north side of the Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center Plaza and shares a building with the Vivian Beaumont Theater. The library includes the Billy Rose Theatre Division, one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive archives devoted to the theatrical arts; the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, the largest and most comprehensive archive in the world devoted to the documentation of dance; the Music Division, which contains one of the world's preeminent music collections; and the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, one of the richest resources of recorded sound in the world. The library has been open since 1965. In 2015, the library was voted Best Public Library by the Village Voice. “If you need to catch up on your John Ford westerns or map the differences and similarities between the styles of Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, or get to the bottom, once and for all, of the sound of John Cage," the Village Voice reported, "the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts is where you want to be.”
This Tour is a Walking Tour.
Get a QR Code for this tour
Begin on Central Park West (CPW) near W. 61st St. & walk up CPW by high-rise apartment buildings including the one made famous in the movie "Ghostbusters", then head west by an art studio & armory to the Lincoln Center complex.
