St. Regis New York

The St. Regis New York is a luxury hotel at 2 East 55th Street, at the southeast corner with Fifth Avenue, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The hotel was originally developed by John Jacob Astor IV and was completed in 1904 to designs by Trowbridge & Livingston. An annex to the east was designed by Sloan & Robertson and completed in 1927. The hotel is operated by Marriott International and holds Forbes five-star and AAA five-diamond ratings. In addition, it is a New York City designated landmark.

The 18-story hotel was designed in the Beaux-Arts style. The facade of the original hotel is made of limestone and is divided into three horizontal sections similar to the components of a column, namely a base, shaft, and capital. The St. Regis required a large amount of mechanical equipment, which was placed on three basement levels. When the St. Regis opened, the interior was extensively decorated in marble and bronze. The first floor contained a restaurant, café, palm court, and hotel office, while the second floor contained a banquet hall, ballroom, and private dining room.

Astor began constructing the hotel in 1901 and named it after Upper St. Regis Lake in the Adirondack Mountains. The hotel opened on September 4, 1904, and quickly became known as an upscale hostelry. Rudolph Haan operated the hotel from its opening until 1926. Astor's son Vincent Astor sold the St. Regis in 1927 to Benjamin Newton Duke, who developed the annex. After an acrimonious dispute in 1934, Vincent Astor re-acquired the hotel the next year and continued to own it until his death in 1959. The hotel was sold several times in the early 1960s, and Cesar Balsa operated the hotel briefly before the St. Regis joined the Sheraton Hotels and Resorts chain in 1966. The St. Regis has been renovated several times over the years, and it became part of the Marriott chain in 2016. The Qatar Investment Authority bought the hotel building in 2019.

The St. Regis New York is at 2 East 55th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is on the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue to the west and 55th Street to the north. The land lot is L-shaped and covers 22,544 sq ft (2,094.4 m²), with a frontage of 250 ft (76 m) on 55th Street and a depth of 100 ft (30 m). Nearby sites include the University Club of New York to the southwest; The Peninsula New York hotel to the west; the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church and 712 Fifth Avenue to the northwest; the 550 Madison Avenue to the northeast; 19 East 54th Street to the east; and 689 Fifth Avenue and the William H. Moore House to the south.

When the St. Regis was announced in 1900, the L-shaped site measured 150 ft (46 m) wide on 55th Street to the north and 75 ft (23 m) wide on Fifth Avenue to the west. The eastern end of the site measured 100 ft (30 m) deep. The L-shaped site spanned 12,500 sq ft (1,160 m²), though the developers obtained an additional 7,500 sq ft (700 m²) by acquiring another site on 55th Street. Before the St. Regis Hotel was developed, there had been proposals to develop a clubhouse for the New York Republican Club on the site. The plot was expanded to 25,000 sq ft (2,300 m²) in early 1927, with a frontage of 100 feet on Fifth Avenue and 250 feet on 55th Street.

Fifth Avenue between 42nd Street and Central Park South (59th Street) was relatively undeveloped through the late 19th century, and many row houses were developed on the avenue. By the early 1900s, that section of Fifth Avenue was becoming a commercial area. Lily Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, owned the site at the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 55th Street until 1891, when she sold it to William Backhouse Astor Jr. for $55,000. After William Astor's death, the site passed first to his widow Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, then to their son John Jacob Astor IV.

John Jacob Astor IV was a co-owner of the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street; his great-grandfather John Jacob Astor had built one of the first modern hotels in the world, the Astor House in Lower Manhattan, in 1836. Although Astor had considered building a residence at Fifth Avenue and 55th Street in 1896, he ultimately decided to develop against it because of the area's increasingly commercial character. Astor announced plans for a three-story commercial structure on the site in 1899 but then changed his plans to those for a hotel. At his niece's suggestion, Astor named the new hotel after Upper St. Regis Lake in the Adirondacks, which in turn was named for French Jesuit priest Jean-François Régis.

At the end of December 1900, Astor leased the proposed Hotel St. Regis to hotelier Rudolph Haan for 20 years, with options for three 20-year extensions. New York City police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt had introduced Haan to the Astor family shortly before the hotel's development. The structure was budgeted at $1.25 million, excluding the $600,000 cost of the land. Excavation of the site began immediately after Haan leased the hotel. Trowbridge & Livingston had completed their designs for the project in early 1901. The original plans were similar to the final design, except that the roof had multiple chimneys. Astor acquired a row house at 6 East 55th Street, just east of the new hotel, in February 1901. Astor also acquired an option on the residence of Sarah Fox at 3 East 54th Street, next to William Rockefeller Jr.'s residence. By early 1902, the hotel's stonework was almost completed, and contractors were applying interior finishes. Haan acquired a second house at 8 East 55th Street in February 1902, which he planned to use for an annex to the hotel.