Banquet at Metropolitan Hotel

Banquet in honor of Cyrus W. Field, at the Metropolitan Hotel, November 15, 1866, sketched by A.R. Waud. Engraving published in Harper's Weekly, issue December 1 of the same year.

Cyrus West Field (1819-1892) was a U.S. businessman, who, along with other entrepreneurs, created the Atlantic Telegraph Company and laid the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean in 1858, which failed. In July 1866, Field successfully laid a new, more durable transatlantic cable. His new cable provided almost instant communication across the Atlantic. Field was acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic.

The five-story Metropolitan Hotel opened in 1852. It was designed in the Italian palazzo style by architects John Butler Snook and Joseph Trench. Inside the structure there was the renowned Niblo's Theatre. The hotel closed in 1895 and it was demolished in the same year.