New York Vintage : Manhattan : Hotel New Yorker

Manhattan : Hotel New Yorker

A pictorial review, circa 1938, of the New Yorker
A Vertical Village
The text is originally published in a 1938 brochure for the New Yorker Hotel.
A vertical village, where every vote of the citizens sends two thousand servants scurrying to satisfy their daily whims, is making history in the heart of New York. This town, which rises instead of spreads, reaches 43 stories toward the skies at Thirty-fourth Street and Eighth Avenue—The New Yorker, Manhattan's largest and tallest hotel. The New Yorker is a vertical city, for without stretching a point to make a phrase, it includes everything that any town has—and in many aspects, much more.
Bellmen smart as West Pointers on parade reach for your bags when you enter the lobby through the tunnel from the Pennsylvania station or step off the B. and O. railroad motor coach at the door. In this great hospitable lobby you immediately sense the luxury and completeness of New York's biggest hotel. Everything moves swiftly and smoothly, without friction or flurry twenty clerks are on duty at the huge front desk and it seems to be only a moment until you are registered and on the way to your room.
The season is the only limit on your appetite in the Terrace Restaurant, known in millions of homes throughout the United States through the four-nights-a-week broadcasts over the nation-wide chains of the National Broadcasting Company. Its simple elegance makes it outstanding among dining salons. The superb service here is entirely a la carte, except at breakfast, when there is a seventy-five cent club meal, and at luncheon when club luncheons are featured at various prices. This restaurant is open again at six for breakfast.
World-famous orchestras interpret the syncopated rhythms of today nightly through the dinner hour and during supper in the Terrace Restaurant, except Sunday when there is dancing only at dinner. There is no cover at dinner; after ten o'clock at night it is one dollar except on Saturdays and holidays when it is two. A concert orchestra plays during luncheon. Made-to-order weather cools this room, as it does all the other New Yorker restaurants and public rooms, so on even the hottest days of summer you can dine and dance without the slightest degree of discomfort.
The Manhattan Room is a delightfully informal restaurant, opening off the main lobby, where the matchless quality of the food is equaled only by the swift, unobtrusive service. Here, also, you find that elusive modern note characteristic of The New Yorker. The walls are built of Persian Walnut, inlaid with solid bronze, and the windows, facing Thirty-fourth Street, are notable for the exquisite craftsmanship of their carved glass. Prices are reasonable with club dinners at $1.50 to $2.00 and luncheons at 75 cents to $1.25.
Down in great kitchens that cover an acre of floor space, one hundred and thirty-five of the world's most famous cooks have dedicated their lives to the service of your appetite. Here is delivered each day the choice of the world's finest food products to be made into palate-pleasing delights for the 10,000 appetites which daily endorse The New Yorker's cuisine. Even the breads, pastries and ice creams are made by our chefs, in these kitchens that are as sweet and clean as mother's cookie jar.
In the Empire Tea Room there is all the grace and charm of France under the Napoleonic era which inspired its green and gold decorations. Bright-faced girls in quaint French provincial costumes serve you breakfast, luncheon, dinner or supper. Here there is a soda fountain and here, too, is the New Yorker Candy Shop where you will find New Yorker Bonbonettes, the delicious new French candies. Food prices are reasonable—breakfast 35 cents and up; luncheon 75 cents; dinner one dollar; supper a la carte. Quick counter service is provided for you in the Coffee Shop, located in the lower lobby. It is open until nine o'clock each night. Breakfast is a la carte; luncheon is 60 cents and dinner is 90 cents. In the Coffee Shop the food is served in all the delicious variety of the other three restaurants, for regardless of what you pay or in what restaurant you dine at The New Yorker you are assured of the same high quality and wholesome flavor. The Coffee Shop has an entrance to Eighth Avenue as well as a lobby entrance.
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