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The Algonquin Hotel Times Square, Autograph Collection
New York City, New York, United States · Autograph Collection · Accessible Luxury
Goldwin Starrett's 1902 hotel on West 44th Street became the lunchroom of American wit when Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Harold Ross held court as the Algonquin Round Table. Ross went on to found The New Yorker in 1925, partly bankrolled by Round Table poker pots. Manager Frank Case courted writers with discounts and free celery, and since the late 1920s a lobby cat named Hamlet or Matilda has ruled the house. It is a New York City landmark and Historic Hotels of America member.
- 174 rooms
- Opened 1902
- Neighborhood: Theater District
- Architect: Goldwin Starrett
About The Algonquin Hotel Times Square, Autograph Collection
- Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Harold Ross lunched in the Rose Room daily from 1919; newspapers covered the Round Table as news.
- Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925 after bankrolling the weekly with poker winnings from his Round Table card game with Raoul Fleischmann.
- Since the late 1920s the lobby has kept a resident cat; males take the name Hamlet after John Barrymore's Broadway role, females answer to Matilda.
- The Blue Bar debuted in 1933 when Prohibition ended; John Barrymore asked for blue gels over the lights, giving the lounge its signature glow.
- Friends of Libraries USA named the hotel a National Literary Landmark in 1996 for its Round Table legacy.
History
The Algonquin Hotel opened on West 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan on November 22, 1902, designed by architect Goldwin Starrett in Renaissance Revival and Beaux-Arts styles. From its first years the hotel cultivated a literary and theatrical character, welcoming writers, editors, actors, and critics who populated the neighborhood's publishing houses and playhouses. It was, notably, among the first major New York hotels to accept unaccompanied women as guests ; a policy that distinguished it from more conservative competitors and reinforced the hotel's identity as a place where social convention was treated with some flexibility.
The institution that made the Algonquin one of the most celebrated small hotels in America began gathering in 1919. A group of writers, wits, critics, and performers ; among them Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Edna Ferber, George S. Kaufman, and Harold Ross, who would go on to found The New Yorker in 1925 ; began meeting for lunch in the hotel's Rose Room. The group became known as the Algonquin Round Table, or, with characteristic self-deprecation, "The Vicious Circle." Their gatherings, famous for their speed and their cruelty, shaped American literary culture in the 1920s and drew the attention of journalists who covered the sessions as cultural events in their own right. The Round Table dispersed by the early 1930s, but its reputation proved more durable than the group itself.
A separate Algonquin tradition involves the hotel cat, a resident feline presence that management has maintained since the 1930s. Male cats are named Hamlet; female cats are named Matilda. The current incumbent holds the title with the gravity the position demands.
The hotel passed through several ownership changes over the second half of the twentieth century, surviving periodic renovations while maintaining its atmosphere of worn literary comfort. It joined Marriott's Autograph Collection as The Algonquin Hotel Times Square, Autograph Collection, which has brought investment in physical restoration while preserving the Blue Bar, the lobby's atmosphere of accumulated history, and the roster of theatrical and literary guests that the hotel continues to attract. New York City has designated the building a landmark, acknowledging what generations of writers and readers already knew: that some addresses earn their fame so thoroughly they become part of the city's civic identity.
The setting
The Algonquin Hotel Times Square anchors the same 1902 landmark at 59 West 44th Street where the Algonquin Round Table ; Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and the founders of The New Yorker ; gathered for nearly a decade of celebrated literary lunches. West 44th Street, known as Club Row for its Harvard Club, Yale Club, and New York Yacht Club neighbors, gave this block a rare institutional gravity that persists today. Times Square is four minutes on foot, Rockefeller Center five minutes, and Grand Central Terminal eight minutes away, placing the hotel at the precise boundary between Broadway's theater district and Midtown's cultural and commercial core.
Restaurants and bars
- Blue Bar Restaurant & Lounge — Bar
Amenities
- Fitness center
- Pet-friendly
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