St. Nicholas, Broadway Hotel

West side Broadway, looking north from Broome Street, New York City. Photograph by Silas A. Holmes (1820-1886), Charles DeForest Fredricks (1823-1894). Source: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

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The old St. Nicholas Hotel in this photo comprises the large white marble structure and its dark northern wing reaching to the corner of Spring Street. The hotel opened in January 1853 and was fully completed in 1854. It was considered the largest hotel in the world at the time. The Broadway front was 275 feet in length and the Spring Street front was 200 feet. The rear, on Mercer Street, was 275 feet. The portico of the main entrance was supported by four Corinthian pillars. The hotel closed in 1884.

The neoclassical Haughwout Building, a department store completed in 1857, is on the right. On the left, on the northwest corner of Broome Street, stood the 495 Broadway a boarding house of Eunitia Bicknell (In 1854, this building housed the St. Nicholas Exhibition Room), which was redesigned in 1859 . So this photo must have been taken between 1857 and 1859.

Street scene distorted by long exposition to take the photo. St. Nicholas Gallery (505 Broadway) adjoins the hotel on the left. It was operational in May 1854. The Dusseldorf Gallery of Paintings is at 497 Broadway, in the Meakim Druggist building.

The Prescott House at 529 Broadway, is on the northwest corner of Spring Street. It was named after the historian William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859).