PROJECT PROFILE

The Algonquin Hotel Exterior Repairs, Historic Restoration, and Plumbing Upgrade

The Beaux Arts–inspired Algonquin Hotel, where literary legends once gathered at the famed Round Table, opened its doors in 1902. Its neo-Renaissance facade features historic decorative ornamentation including roaring terra cotta lions.

PROPERTY to American culture, including The New Facade 13-story, 181-room Beaux Arts- Yorker magazine, which Ross founded The facade repair programs included inspired hotel at 59 West 44th Street in and financed in 1925 after winning a restoration of the bay window metalwork Midtown Manhattan, a New York City high-stakes game of poker against other and repairing and replacing historic Historic Landmark. members of the “Vicious Circle” (as the terra cotta and stone elements to restore group called itself). period details to their former glory. HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE The hotel was designated a New York Built in 1902, the Algonquin Hotel was City Historic Landmark in 1987, and a Plumbing originally designed as an apartment National Literary Landmark in 1996. The plumbing upgrade entailed the building. When the apartments failed installation of a new domestic water to attract enough tenants, the building RAND’S PROJECT HISTORY service main, a combined sanitary/ was turned into a hotel and in 1907 RAND has worked at the Algonquin storm water sewer from the city main, christened as The Algonquin after the Hotel since 1996. The projects include and a new duplex suspended wet-pit first tribes to occupy the area. the following: sewage ejector pump system.

Among the hotel’s claims to fame was th th the Algonquin Round Table, a group of ▪▪ 4 to 8 Cycle Facade Inspection Safety Expediting Services journalists, authors, publicists, critics, Program (FISP) inspections All Department of Buildings and playwrights, and actors who met daily ▪▪ Exterior repairs Landmarks Preservation Commission at the hotel from 1919 to 1929. Core ▪▪ Historic restoration work permits were obtained by RAND’s members included Dorothy Parker, ▪▪ Plumbing upgrade Code & Zoning Compliance Team. Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, and ▪▪ Sidewalk repair program Harold Ross. The meetings introduced ENGINEER/ARCHITECT significant literary styles and movements ▪▪ Sidewalk vault evaluation RAND Engineering & Architecture, DPC

RAND Engineering & Architecture, DPC ▪ 159 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 ▪ 212-675-8844 ▪ randpc.com