Owner Lotte Hotels & Resorts | Management Lotte Hotels & Resorts | |
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Address 455 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10022
U.S. Architect McKim, Mead, and White (The Villard Mansion), Emery Roth & Sons (The Helmsley Palace Hotel) and Lee S Jablin, Harman Jablin Architects (The Palace Hotel) | ||
The Lotte New York Palace Hotel is a luxury hotel in Midtown Manhattan, at the corner of 50th Street and Madison Avenue. The property is housed in the historic landmark Villard Mansion and an adjacent modern 55-story skyscraper.
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History
In 1882, Henry Villard, a railroad financier, hired McKim, Mead & White to create six private brownstone townhouses surrounding a courtyard on Madison Avenue. The architectural firm created the houses in the neo-Italian Renaissance tradition, after the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome.
In the spring of 1974, the developer Harry Helmsley proposed a 55-story hotel for the site of the Villard Houses called The Helmsley Palace Hotel. To construct his hotel tower, Helmsley hired Emery Roth & Sons, who created its design of dark bronze reflective glass and anodized aluminum to blend with the Villard Houses and the surrounding skyline of Manhattan. The Helmsley Palace Hotel opened in 1981 and was operated by Helmsley until 1992, when the hotel came under the management of a private New York limited partnership owned by the family of Hassanal Bolkiah, the Sultan of Brunei, changing its name to The New York Palace.
During Helmsley's ownership, his wife Leona Helmsley maintained a strict and intolerant management style which involved her firing staff members for trivial mistakes, an act which gave her the nickname "Queen of Mean". The hotel reverted to its bond holders from Leona Helmsley and was ultimately purchased by the Sultan of Brunei with the concurrence of the US Bankruptcy Court. The Sultan of Brunei, through its development company, Amedeo Limited, hired Lee Jablin of Harman Jablin Architects for the complete renovation of the hotel and Villard Houses.
Northwood Investors bought the hotel from the Sultan of Brunei in 2011.
Lotte Hotels & Resorts, an owner and operator of luxury hotels based in Seoul, South Korea, agreed to a deal acquiring the hotel for $805 million from real estate management firm Northwood Investors at the end of May 2015. Lotte Hotels & Resorts completed the acquisition on August 28, 2015. The hotel was afterwards renamed the Lotte New York Palace Hotel.
The courtyard and lobby
What was once The Villard Mansion’s carriage entrance on Madison Avenue is now Lotte New York Palace’s Courtyard. During the restoration of the hotel, the Courtyard was redesigned to incorporate motifs from the flooring of several 15th-century Italian cathedrals, a nod to its original styling after Rome’s Palazzo della Cancellaria. A two-story lobby joins The Villard Mansion with the newer tower building of the hotel.
Guest rooms
Lotte New York Palace Hotel has a total of around 822 guest rooms and 87 suites, as of March 2016. Rates range from $380 to $25,000 per night.
The Towers
The Towers at Lotte New York Palace are a subset of 176 accommodations among the rooms in the tower building. The Towers rooms and suites are located on floors 41 and above.
In 2015, The Towers earned a TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence. The Towers was ranked #10 on Tripadvisor's Top 25 Luxury Hotels in the United States.