May Day 04/05/2006 - Hotels (Part 1)

“Five minutes later, arm in arm, they left the Commodore and made their way through a curious, staring crowd along Forty-second Street, and up Vanderbilt Avenue to the Biltmore” (page 122).


The Biltmore

The Biltmore was an upscale chain of hotels that tried to evoke the “Vanderbilt family’s Biltmore Estate”[1] name. Designed by the architectural firm of Warren and Wetmore, the red granite New York Biltmore was founded by John McEntee Bowman.[2]

“When demolition began on the Biltmore Hotel in 1981, representatives of the Landmarks Conservancy, a private group, sought a court order restraining further demolition until the city's Landmarks and Preservation Commission had a chance to determine whether the Biltmore - with its gilt clock, Palm Court, and ballroom-should be designated a landmark. The Commission declined to give the Biltmore landmark status, but the developers did settle with the conservancy for $500,000. Today, the former Biltmore serves as the Bank of America's eastern headquarters - without the ballroom or Palm Court” (http://www.nysun.com/article/7221).

Bank Of America Plaza is an incredibly banal building. The block that once housed the exquisite Biltmore has turned itself into such a dull, grey piece of shit but then again it is a bank.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “May Day”. Tales of the Jazz Age. First Pine Street Books: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2003.
The picture is from, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biltmore_Hotel
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biltmore_Hotel
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Biltmore_Hotel