The Metropolitan Hotel
c. 1852
Attributed to J. Mulner
Oil on wood panel, 55 X 65
The J. Clarence Davies Collection, 29.100.1321

 

When it opened on September 1, 1852, the Metropolitan Hotel was judged the most magnificent modern hostelry on lower Broadway. The neighborhood was fast becoming an area of international stature housing palatial retail stores, theaters, lodging establishments, and fine restaurants, most built from marble, brownstone, or decorative cast iron. All the latest amenities had been incorporated into the new brownstone-sheathed hotel, including steam heat, speaking tubes, and bathrooms on each of the six floors. Soon after the hotel's debut, the New York Herald commended its trend-setting comforts, noting a bounty of four hundred beds "made upon spring mattresses, with hair mattresses over them." The lobby and common spaces inspired lengthy descriptions laden with superlatives. "On the first floor are ladies' reception room, gentlemen's lounging room, dressing rooms, and apartments for the reception of guests, prior to assigning them rooms," began one enthusiastic report, which proceeded to inventory the opulent decor found in the dining room, public parlors, and other suites in the establishment. The tally of attractions included mantles made of rare marbles, polished oak banisters, Wilton carpets, rosewood furniture upholstered in rich brocatelle, silk damask curtains, and stained-glass windows with heraldic motifs. "Suffice it to say," the reporter concluded, "it is quite dazzling and confusing."¹

Designed in an L-shape, the Metropolitan Hotel occupied a three-hundred-foot frontage on Broadway and two hundred feet on Prince Street. Along Broadway, it accommodated eight street-level stores with broad areas of glass for displaying goods. More notable was its connection to William Niblo's new "Garden" on the Crosby Street side of the property, with a main access to the entertainment complex retained at 578 Broadway, next to the hotel's entrance at 580 Broadway.² Both enterprises stood on land owned by Stephen Van Rensselaer, who undoubtedly realized the benefits of linking the hotel and pleasure garden, hence catering to patrons' needs for lodging, food, and amusement on one site. Realization of the overall plan had been entrusted to architects Joseph Trench and John Butler Snook, a firm recommended in all likelihood by A. T. Stewart, a stockholder in the hotel and owner of the nearby department store bearing his name.³ Both the hotel and Stewart's marble emporium were constructed in a grand commercialized style reminiscent of Roman palazzos.

This large, detailed view emphasizes not only the imposing exterior of the hotel facing Broadway but also the activity that engulfed it on the adjacent city streets and sidewalks. These are filled with smartly dressed people and assorted conveyances, including horses. Individual vignettes within the scene illuminate information about urban culture during this period. The pair of women without male escorts in the center foreground suggest the growing acceptability of shopping trips as a pastime for refined ladies, spurred by the opening of new department stores like Stewart's. An image peddler, on the sidewalk approaching the street corner at the viewer's right, carries on his head a tray of plaster figures for sale to passersby. A bagpiper clad in kilts steps briskly in the opposite direction, patrolling the hotel entrance area while awaiting the occasion to welcome any arriving dignitaries. The scene's bustle underscores the heterogeneous traffic gravitating to this section of Broadway by the middle of the nineteenth century, thus validating the location as a prime one for investors in the new Metropolitan Hotel complex.

Nothing has been found to explain the circumstances that brought this painting to life, nor can the identity of the presumed artist, J. Mulner, be substantiated.⁴ Several prints in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York, related to period advertisements and guidebook illustrations for the hotel, appear to derive from this large panel painting. Possibly it was commissioned by the hotel's owner for display in the new facility. From the outset, hotel management rights had been leased to the Leland Brothers, acknowledged leaders in the business of managing American hotels. In their business literature, the Lelands featured an image of the Metropolitan closely related to the painting.

During the Lelands' tenure, A. T. Stewart acquired the property. Following the departure of the Lelands from the establishment in 1871, the hotel was leased to a succession of less capable managers -Richard Tweed, son of the infamous William Marcy "Boss" Tweed, among them. With a tarnished reputation and no longer able to compete for the upscale clientele that had shifted allegiance to newer, uptown hostelries, the Metropolitan Hotel closed and was demolished in 1895. Stewart's estate sold the property for construction of office buildings.⁵

Notes:

  1  The Herald's account of the new Metropolitan Hotel was reproduced in "A Broadway Hotel," Builder 10, no. 504 (October 2, 1852): 630 -631.

  2  William Niblo's previous "pleasure gardens" had been destroyed by fire in 1846, prompting the wealthy proprietor to retire to the country. He was soon persuaded to return from retirement to again address the public's clamor for lively amusements of the variety his garden had offered. While the new Niblo's -on the northeast corner of Prince and Broadway, connecting to the Crosby Street block -was under construction in 1849, foundations were being dug for the Metropolitan Hotel. Niblo is credited as having suggested the idea of a hotel to Stephen Van Rennselaer, from whom he continued to lease his garden site.

  3  See Mary Ann Smith, "The Metropolitan Hotel and Niblo's Garden: A Luxury Resort Complex in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Manhattan," Nineteenth Century 5, no. 4 (1979): 45 -48. According to Smith, Trench and Stock had designed both the first stage of Stewart's store at 280 Broadway and the first of several additions to it. A pioneering retail store with an innovative marble facade, it was hailed as the "Marble Palace."

  4  Mulner's name is associated with the painting as artist in the catalogue records prepared for the J. Clarence Davies Collection in 1929. No further evidence was supplied to explain the attribution, however, and research efforts to date have failed to locate any additional information about Mulner. A curator associated with the Davies Collection at the time of its receipt conjectured that the painting "is very presumably one of the views which form a part of the canopy for Porter Belden's 'Model of New York,' of which all trace has been lost." Belden's model, which featured on its canopy one hundred oil paintings representing leading New York City businesses and places of note, made its debut at the Minerva Rooms on Broadway in July 1846, well before planning for the Metropolitan Hotel was under way. It is thus unlikely that an image of the future hotel -whose foundations were not dug until three years later -could have found its way into the model's decorative program.

  5  For an account of the hotel's later years and decline, see Frank W. Crane, "Realty Sale on Lower Broadway Revives Memories of Old Hotel," New York Times, February 23, 1941.