Metropolitan Hotel on Broadway

The Seventh Regiment are drawn up opposite the Metropolitan Hotel while the ambassadors enter the carriages, June 18, 1860. Japanese embassy officials sent by the Tokugawa Shogunate, during their first diplomatic mission to the United States. Thousands of New Yorkers packed the streets to watch the sword-toting samurai parade on Broadway.

Broadway, looking north, photo originally part of a stereoscopic view published by E. & H.T. Anthony. Source: New York Public Library.

The Metropolitan Hotel opened in 1852. It was designed in the Italian palazzo style by architects John Butler Snook and Joseph Trench. The five-story building occupied 360 feet on Broadway and 210 feet on Prince Street. Its façade was in brownstone on the four floors above the stores on ground floor. The hotel closed in 1895 and it was demolished in the same year.