The Hotel Belleclaire (also the Belleclaire Hotel) is a hotel at 2175 Broadway, on the corner with West 77th Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Constructed between 1901 and 1903 as one of several apartment hotels along Broadway on the Upper West Side, the Belleclaire was one of the first large buildings designed by architect Emery Roth. Its design incorporates elements of the Art Nouveau and Secession styles. The hotel is a New York City designated landmark.
The hotel building is 10 stories tall. Its facade is largely made of red brick with ornamentation made of limestone, metal, and terracotta. The limestone base is two stories high and contains a main entrance on Broadway; above the base, the building contains light courts facing north and south. The hotel's exterior includes a curved corner facing both Broadway and 77th Street, as well as a two-story mansard roof with arches. The hotel originally contained several ground-floor amenity areas for guests, each designed in a different style, although most of these spaces were demolished in the mid-20th century. The upper floors originally were divided into apartments with one to three rooms each. These apartments have been rearranged over the years into 254 guestrooms.
The hotel was developed by Albert Saxe, who had previously hired Roth to design another building on the Upper West Side. The hotel formally opened on January 12, 1903, and was originally an upscale apartment hotel, with several operators during its first two decades. The Belleclaire's ground-story rooms were replaced with shops in the 1920s, and the hotel had lost its high-class reputation by the 1930s. Following a series of modifications in the mid-20th century, the building started to physically deteriorate due to a lack of maintenance, and the Belleclaire became a single room occupancy hotel. Amid an increase in tourism to New York City, Shimmie Horn began operating the hotel in 1999 and renovated it into a boutique hotel. As of 2014, the hotel is operated by Triumph Hotels.
Site
The Belleclaire is located at 2175 Broadway, at the southwest corner with 77th 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, 77th Street to the north, West End Avenue to the west, and 76th Street to the south. The hotel has an alternate address of 250 West 77th Street. The land lot covers . The building has frontage of on Broadway and on 77th Street, and it measures long along its southern lot line. Nearby buildings include the Astor to the south, the West End Collegiate Church to the west, and the Collegiate School and the Apthorp to the north.
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 "Thousand Acre Tract", owned by several English and Dutch settlers, in 1667. The land between 73rd and 77th Street was part of the estate of Cornelius Dyckman Jr. and remained in the family through the end of the 18th century. 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, section of 77th Street west of modern-day Broadway remained unpaved as late as 1890. Developers began erecting large apartment buildings in the area by the end of the 1890s.
Architecture
The Hotel Belleclaire was one of the first buildings designed by Hungarian-American architect Emery Roth, who, at the time of the hotel's construction, worked for the firm Stein, Cohn & Roth. It contains elements of the Art Nouveau and Secession styles. This contrasted with other large buildings in the area at the time, such as the Ansonia and the Dorilton, which were designed in the Beaux-Arts style. The Belleclaire's design also contrasted with both Roth's earlier Saxony apartments, which contained flatter ornamentation, and his later work, which was usually designed in the Italian Renaissance style. Architectural writer Paul Goldberger of The New York Times wrote that, in the design of the Belleclaire, "it is clear that the architect, who was under 30 when the building was designed, was still seeking style with which he could feel fully comfortable".