The Lexington Hotel, Autograph Collection is a hotel at 509 Lexington Avenue, at the southeast corner with 48th Street, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The 27-story hotel was designed by Schultze & Weaver in the Romanesque Revival style and contains 725 rooms. The Lexington, one of several large hotels developed around Grand Central Terminal as part of Terminal City, is a New York City designated landmark.
The hotel building contains a facade of brick, limestone, and architectural terracotta. It contains light courts facing north and west, as well as setbacks to comply with the 1916 Zoning Resolution. The limestone base is two to three stories high and contains storefronts, a main entrance on 48th Street, and an archway on Lexington Avenue. The upper stories are generally clad with plain brick and contain random projecting groups of bricks; there is a narrow tower at the top of the building. The basement contains a restaurant space that formerly housed event venues, including the Hawaiian Room. When the hotel opened, it had 814 guestrooms, though this has been reduced over the years.
The Lexington opened on October 15, 1929, and was originally operated by the Hotel Lexington Corporation, led by J. Leslie Kincaid. The hotel went into foreclosure in 1932, and Ralph Hitz's National Hotel Management Company operated the hotel until 1937, when Hotel Lexington Inc. took over. Lawrence Wien bought the hotel in 1954 and leased it to a syndicate led by Saul Hertzig. Indian conglomerate Tata Group acquired the Lexington in 1981 and operated it for several years. The hotel became the Radisson Hotel New York-East Side in 1999 after becoming a franchise of Radisson Hotels. DiamondRock Hospitality acquired the hotel in 2011, and the Lexington left the Radisson chain and became part of Marriott's Autograph Collection. Since 2021, a joint venture between MCR Hotels, Three Wall Capital, and Island Capital Group has owned the Lexington.
Site The Lexington Hotel is at 511 Lexington Avenue, at the southeast corner with 48th Street, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It sits on the western portion of a city block bounded by Lexington Avenue to the west, 48th Street to the north, Third Avenue to the east, and 47th Street to the south. The hotel occupies a rectangular land lot with an area of . The site has a frontage of on Lexington Avenue and on 48th Street.
The building is across from 245 Park Avenue to the southwest, 277 Park Avenue to the west, the InterContinental New York Barclay Hotel and 299 Park Avenue to the northwest, and the New York Marriott East Side to the north. The Lexington was part of "Hotel Row", a collection of hotels developed along Lexington Avenue in the early 20th century. Prior to the development of the Hotel Lexington, the site had been occupied by a brick "elevator building". The surrounding section of Lexington Avenue from 42nd to 52nd Street did not experience significant development until the late 19th century, when row houses and tenements, made of brick and brownstone, were developed in the area.
Architecture The original architect was Schultze & Weaver. The hotel was designed in the Romanesque Revival style, with a facade of brick, limestone, and architectural terracotta. The hotel building contains setbacks to comply with the 1916 Zoning Resolution. It is variously cited as being 25, 27, or 30 stories high. This discrepancy is based on whether the towers atop the building, which have pyramidal roofs, are counted.
Facade The building's base is clad with limestone and ranges from two to three stories high. The rest of the facade is clad with red brick; at arbitrary intervals, there are projecting bricks which are laid on their header faces. In addition, there are light courts on the north and west elevations above the 2nd floor, and there are windows with brick spandrels above the 5th floor.
Base The center of the Lexington Avenue facade contains a round arch, which was originally an entrance but has since been converted to a storefront. The arch is flanked by black-marble piers, and there is an overhanging marquee and a semicircular glass window directly above the entrance. On the second floor, the archway is flanked by windows with engaged columns on either side, which in turn are topped by tympana. In addition, the facade contains sculptural details such as griffins, rosettes, and six sculpted figures (two sitting, four standing) that signify the seasons. The third floor contains two arcaded windows, both of which are flanked by columns that contain winged lions at their bases and human faces at their capitals. On either side of the black-marble piers are large windows, which originally contained doorways. Next to these windows are angled piers, which contain depictions of eagles with shields at their capitals. A pair of flagpoles projects from these piers; the bases of the flagpoles are shaped like eagles.
To the north and south of the Lexington Avenue archway are two-story wings, which are divided into multiple bays by angled piers. Each of those wings contains a storefront at ground level. The tops of these piers contain Corinthian capitals, above which are engaged columns with winged lions atop them. Above the second-story windows of both wings are tympana, followed by a frieze with alternating rosettes and griffins. The 48th Street facade is similar in design to that on Lexington Avenue, except that some of the windows have been infilled and replaced with ventilation grates. The easternmost bay of the 48th Street entrance is recessed from the rest of the facade and contains a round arch with a service entrance. Directly above the service entrance, the second floor contains a pair of round-arched windows within a stone frame.
The center of the 48th Street elevation contains the main entrance, which is three bays wide and is shielded by a projecting marquee with the hotel's name. Each bay is separated by a geometric pier, ornamented with a gilded capital at the first story and a stone lion above the second story. A small set of steps leads up to a recessed foyer, and there is also a wheelchair ramp. Above the entrance, there is a railing at the third story, behind which is a light court.
Upper stories The upper stories are generally clad with plain brick and contain random projecting groups of bricks. The spandrels, between the windows on each story, contain geometric motifs. The windows, parapets, and the side walls adjacent to the parapets are decorated in terracotta. Some of the bricks, windows, and terracotta detailing have been replaced over the years. In the easternmost bay on 48th Street, the third-floor windows have stone frames, while the fourth-floor windows have stone sills.
The 21st-story windows consist of round arches, although the transom windows on this story (at the top of each arch) have been infilled. There are bird-shaped finials above the 21st-story spandrels and lintels. A narrow tower, with round arches and a pyramidal roof, rises above the Lexington Avenue facade on the 21st story. In addition, the southern wing on Lexington Avenue has a mansard roof and a chimney. There are an additional chimney and tower on 48th Street.
Features
Public rooms Unlike in older hotels, the Lexington's ground level originally had retail space instead of meeting areas. The basement of the hotel initially contained a dining room known as the Silver Grill, which opened in 1932 and was converted into the Hawaiian Room in 1937. Jac Lessman redesigned the Hawaiian Room with a wall mural painted by Carl Koeck, a blue ceiling, and palm-tree decorations. According to The Wall Street Journal, the restaurant was described as having the "best Polynesian cuisine east of the Pacific". By 2012, the hotel had three restaurants: a Latin-American cafe named Taina Café, a gourmet Chinese restaurant named S. Dynasty, and a casual eatery called Raffles. The lobby contained a reception desk with an illuminated clock behind it.
The modern design of the Lexington's public rooms dates to a 2016 renovation by architectural firm dash design, which converted the S. Dynasty space into a meeting space. The ground level contains a pair of Art Deco-style meeting rooms known as the Speakeasy and the Interlude, which can collectively fit 120 people. The rooms are designed with neutral colors and purple hues, as well as artwork by Mao Kudo and Rose Dickson. The spaces are accessed from a pre-function space called the Swing Room, which adjoins a small niche for meetings. The hotel also contains a two-story lobby with furnishings and art from the early 20th century, as well as a bar called the Mixing Room.
Guestrooms The hotel originally had 801 guestrooms. Following a renovation in 2001, the hotel had 522 regular rooms, 101 deluxe rooms, and 82 suites. By 2012, the hotel had 712 rooms. At that time, the guestrooms were redecorated in a Jazz Age-inspired style with Art Deco patterns and furniture. One of the 18th-floor suites, formerly occupied by baseball player Joe DiMaggio and his actress wife Marilyn Monroe, is themed to baseball and contains a living room, a kitchen, a bedroom, two bathrooms, and a terrace. , MCR Hotels operates the Lexington as a 725-room hotel.
History In the 19th century, New York Central Railroad lines north of Grand Central Depot in Midtown Manhattan were served exclusively by steam locomotives, and the rising traffic soon caused accumulations of smoke and soot in the Park Avenue Tunnel, the only approach to the depot. After a fatal crash in 1902, the New York state legislature passed a law to ban all steam trains in Manhattan by 1908. The New York Central's vice president William J. Wilgus proposed electrifying the line and building a new electric-train terminal underground, a plan that was implemented almost in its entirety. The old Grand Central Depot was torn down in phases and replaced by the current Grand Central Terminal. Construction on Grand Central Terminal started in 1903, and the new terminal was opened on February 2, 1913. Passenger traffic on the commuter lines into Grand Central more than doubled in the years following the terminal's completion.
The terminal spurred development in the surrounding area, particularly in Terminal City, a commercial and office district created above where the tracks were covered. Terminal City soon became Manhattan's most desirable commercial and office district. A 1920 New York Times article said, "With its hotels, office buildings, apartments and underground Streets it not only is a wonderful railroad terminal, but also a great civic centre." The Lexington was one of several hotels developed in Terminal City, along with other hostelries such as the Barclay, Commodore, Roosevelt, and Biltmore.
Development and early years