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Hotel Marseilles

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Hotel Marseilles

The Hotel Marseilles (also known as the Marseilles) is a residential building at 2689–2693 Broadway, on the corner with West 103rd Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Constructed between 1902 and 1905 as one of several apartment hotels along Broadway on the Upper West Side, the Marseilles was designed by architect Harry Allan Jacobs in the Beaux-Arts style. The building is a New York City designated landmark.

The building is 11 stories tall. Its facade is largely made of red brick and stone, with ornamentation made of architectural terracotta and wrought iron. The limestone base is three stories high and contains a main entrance on 103rd Street; the building also contains an interior light court facing south. The structure is topped by a two-story mansard roof with asphalt tiles. When the Marseilles operated as a hotel, it contained several dining rooms and other spaces for guests. The upper stories were arranged into more than 250 guestrooms, which have since been converted into 134 apartments for the elderly.

The Marseilles was developed by J. Arthur Pinchbeck, whose Netherlands Construction Company developed the structure as an apartment hotel. The hotel was completed in October 1905 and was originally operated by Louis Lukes before being resold several times in the 20th century. The ground-story rooms were replaced with shops in the 1920s. The structure contained a refugee center for Holocaust survivors in the 1940s, and the Marseilles became a single room occupancy hotel in the late 20th century. Two attempts to convert the building into affordable housing for elderly people failed in the 1960s and 1970s. The West Side Federation for Senior Housing sponsored a third, successful conversion, which was completed in 1980.

The Marseilles is located at 2689–2693 Broadway, at the southwest corner with 103rd Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. It occupies the eastern end of the city block bounded by Broadway to the east, 103rd Street to the north, West End Avenue to the west, and 102nd Street to the south. The hotel has an alternate address of 2693 Broadway. The rectangular land lot covers 12,110 sq ft (1,125 m2), with a frontage of about 101 feet (31 m) on Broadway and 120 feet (37 m) on 103rd Street. Nearby buildings include the Master Apartments two blocks west, the Horn & Hardart Building one block north, and the Association Residence Nursing Home one block east. In addition, an entrance to the New York City Subway's 103rd Street station is immediately across 103rd Street from the building.

Before European colonization of modern-day New York City, the site was part of the hunting grounds of the Wecquaesgeek Native American tribe. After the British established the Province of New York, the area became part of the land holdings of Isaac Bedlow in the late 1660s; he owned the land on what is now the west side of Manhattan from 89th to 107th streets. Humphrey Jones acquired the land between 99th and 107th streets in 1752. While the Manhattan street grid was laid out as part of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, the neighborhood remained undeveloped through the late 19th century. The sites on Broadway's western sidewalks from 89th to 109th streets were still vacant as late as the 1890s.

The Hotel Marseilles was designed by Harry Allan Jacobs and is one of multiple apartment hotels on Broadway designed in the Beaux-Arts style. The building is 11 stories high and is U-shaped, with a light court on its southern side.

The facade is made of brick and stone, although some decorative details are made of architectural terracotta and wrought iron. On Broadway, the facade is divided into seven bays, while on 103rd Street, the facade is divided into nine bays. The design of the Marseilles is similar to that of the Manhasset Apartments several blocks north, which also has a brick facade and a mansard roof. The western elevation, which is partially visible from the street, is clad with plain brown brick and has three windows on each story.

On Broadway, the first through third stories are clad in rusticated stone blocks, interspersed with some horizontal courses. There are some storefronts on the first story along Broadway, which are separated vertically by piers; a cornice runs above these storefronts. There are keystones and voussoirs above the second-story windows, which are arched. The windows on the third story are smaller, and there are large console brackets flanking the second-outermost windows, as well as narrow slit windows flanking the third and fourth bays from the south. A cornice runs above the third story. On the fourth to seventh stories, the facade is generally made of red brick, except for the stone window sills. The second-outermost bays are flanked by vertical quoins, which support small cornices above the seventh story. The entire eighth floor is clad in stone, while the ninth floor is clad in brick, with a terracotta cornice running horizontally above it. There is a mansard roof above the ninth story, which was re-clad with asphalt tiles in the late 20th century. The tenth-story windows in the mansard roof are topped by pediments, while the eleventh story has double-hung windows within the roof.

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