Madison Square Hotel at 37 Madison Avenue

The Madison Square Hotel at 37 Madison Avenue opened in July 1904 as "The Madison Square" (also known as Madison Square Apartments or Madison Square apartment house) and advertised as "a modern fireproof apartment house apartment hotel of the highest class". S.W. Matthewson, Jr. was the resident manager. The hotel was demolished in the late 1969 or early 1970.

The property was owned by Phelps Stokes Estates. The building was an L-shaped structure consisting of a 10-story wing, fronting on (33 to 37) Madison Avenue, and a 13-story wing fronting at 38 to 40 East 26th Street. It had four elevators and a public dining room, two stories in height. The house offered housekeeping apartments and non-housekeeping apartments (furnished and unfurnished), larger suits at proportionate and ground floor office of two or three rooms. It was chiefly residential, but rooms or apartments could be had by the day, weeks or year.

The Leonard Jerome mansion stood on the corner of East 26th Street. It was built from 1859 to 1865 by Sir Winton Churchill's maternal grandfather. Both, the hotel and the mansion were demolished by 1969.

The Madison Square Hotel was a fashionable hotel, home of numerous permanent residents, including Charles Seymour Whitman (1868-1947), 41st Governor of New York, and Margaret Christie (1882-1967), a literary agent who died in her apartment. The actor James Stewart said (Tributes Paid to Henry Fonda, New York Times, August 13, 1982) that: "We worked together on Broadway, starting in 1932, and for a couple of years we roomed together at the Madison Square Hotel in New York".

By March 1905, more than five hundred persons lived in the apartment house. In 1915 the house was managed by V.V. Farone and G.H. Waetjen was the assistant manager. By that time, the house was also called Madison Square Hotel. By 1920, L. Marshall Thompson was the president and general manager. A large sign, with this name, was put on top of the building in the 1920s or 1930s (before 1935).

In 1936, the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank acquired the hotel in foreclosure. In 1944, the bank sold the 340-room hostelry to Marion Reich, former Polish oil executive.

According to the New York Times (July 8, 1969), the hotel was to be sold with plans to be replaced with an office building. It had then 345 rooms, including 75 office suits and housekeeping apartments. The hotel was demolished in the late 1969 or early 1970 and replaced by the 41 Madison Avenue, a 42-story tower completed in 1974.

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