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The Carlyle Hotel is a historic luxury hotel located at 35 East 76th Street on the northeast corner of Madison Avenue, in the Upper East Side area of New York City. The hotel, designed in Art Deco style and named after Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle, was built by Moses Ginsberg, maternal grandfather of Rona Jaffe. The hotel was opened in November 1930, the year before Jaffe was born. A cooperative with 180 rental units and 60 privately-owned suites, the Carlyle became a Manhattan trophy asset and one of the fifteen hotels owned by Rosewood Hotels & Resorts in 2001.
Carlyle was designed by architects Bien & Prince and originally opened as a residential hotel, with apartments costing up to $20,000 a year.
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Encyclopedia
The Carlyle Hotel is a historic luxury hotel located at 35 East 76th Street on the northeast corner of Madison Avenue, in the Upper East Side area of New York City. The hotel, designed in Art Deco style and named after Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle, was built by Moses Ginsberg, maternal grandfather of Rona Jaffe. The hotel was opened in November 1930, the year before Jaffe was born. A cooperative with 180 rental units and 60 privately-owned suites, the Carlyle became a Manhattan trophy asset and one of the fifteen hotels owned by Rosewood Hotels & Resorts in 2001.
Out of the Depression
The Carlyle was designed by architects Bien & Prince and originally opened as a residential hotel, with apartments costing up to $20,000 a year. (Foulkes, 50) Apartment hotels had become increasingly popular since World War I. As the economy boomed and skyscrapers rose, New York was transforming so quickly that "owning a townhouse made no sense." (Foulkes, 25) The new thirty-five floor hotel "was to be a masterpiece in the modern idiom, in which shops and restaurants on the lower floors would give residents the convenience and comforts of a "community skyscraper." (30) However, by the time the Carlyle was ready to open its doors, the 1929 stock market crash had decisively ended the boom times. The new hotel struggled, went into receivership in 1931 and was sold to the Lyleson Corporation in 1932. (Foulkes, 50) The new owners kept the old manager, Frank J. L. Lenney, and managing agents, Douglas L. Elliman and Company, who were able to dramatically improve its financial situation through maintaining high occupancy and a high ratio of rate structure to fixed costs. However, the hotel's reputation at this time was "staid rather than ritzy." (57)
The next post-war boom allowed the hotel to take on new high society prominence. In 1948, the Carlyle was purchased by New York celebrity businessman Robert Whittle Downing, who began to transform the Carlyle from a "respectable" address to a "downright fashionable" one, frequented by elegant Europeans (Foulkes, 69-71). That year, Harry Truman became the first president to visit the Carlyle; each of his successors, at least up to and including Bill Clinton, has followed suit.
Rise to Prominence
The Carlyle became known as "the New York White House" during the administration of President John F. Kennedy, who owned an apartment on the 34th floor for the ten years prior to his death. He stayed at the apartment in a well-publicized visit for a few days just prior to his inauguration in January 1961. Marilyn Monroe was sneaked in through the service entrance on East 77 street. After famously singing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" at Kennedy's birthday gala at Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962, Monroe reportedly used a warren of tunnels to enter the Carlyle secretly with Kennedy and friends. Years later, longtime bellman Michael O'Connell recalled "Those tunnels. President Kennedy knew more about the tunnels than I did." (Foulkes, 83). The Carlyle was the last place Kennedy ate breakfast before his assassination.
The Council for United Civil Rights Leadership (CUCRL) was setup in a meeting held at the Carlyle Hotel. Malcolm X expresses his concerns with having a white man in charge of this new fundraising organisation during his 10 November 1963 speech Message to the Grassroots. He describes the hotel (rather than just one suite) as being owned by the Kennedy family.
The hotel is also the source of the name for the Carlyle Group, as it was the location where that firm's founders first met in the mid-1980s.
Despite its brushes with history, the hotel retained a reputation for discretion; in 2000, the New York Times called it a "Palace of Secrets."
Entertainment and Dining
The hotel's Café Carlyle has featured a number of well-known jazz performers - notably George Feyer from 1955-1968, and Bobby Short from 1968-2004. Woody Allen and his jazz band have been playing weekly at the café since 1996. Other artists who have performed at the Cafe Carlyle include Elaine Stritch, Judy Collins, Barbara Cook, Eartha Kitt, John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey, Beverly Peer, and Ute Lemper. Steve Tyrell has been the featured performer in December through New Year's Eve for several years.
The Cafe Carlyle is noted for the murals by Marcel Vertes, which were cleaned in the summer of 2007 as part of a renovation that included raising the ceiling of the intimate space by two feet. Scott Salvator was responsible for the 2007 renovation. In its Bemelmans Bar, the hotel features a mural entitled "Central Park", the only surviving publicly accessible artwork by Ludwig Bemelmans, the author of the Madeline children's books.
The Carlyle Restaurant, formerly Dumonet at the Carlyle, is open seven days a week for three meals (including a Sunday brunch).
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