Everett House, Union Square NYC

Everett House was a first class-hotel in New York City located on the East 17th Street, northwest corner of Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue South), fronting on Union Square. the hotel opened in 1853, provided both transient and permanent accommodations and it closed in 1907.

Plans to erect this hotel began about 1848. The Everett House opened in December 1853 by Hawley D. Clapp (1817-1880), who had christened it in honor of the Massachusetts Senator and Secretary of State, Edward Everett (1794-1865). Clapp was known as proprietor of the Hamilton House, a summer retreat at Fort Hamilton.

The five-story hotel was built of brick, contained 60 suites of rooms, consisting of private parlors with one or two bedrooms, adjoining and connecting with the same as well as with the public halls. The richly decorated rooms were uncommonly high, fifteen and a half feet between the floor and the ceiling. This, and the fact that they were all warmed by open grates, in which only in Liverpool at that time, coal was burned, secured a good atmosphere. The different suits of rooms were free from external disturbances as separate houses. They were supplied with a bathing room, with hot and cold water. There were no public table. Families dined in their parlors or in small private dining rooms. There was a good restaurant in the basement and shops opened onto the Fourth Avenue side.

Prince Henry of Battenberg, the Duchess of Marlborough, Mary Todd Lincoln, Presidential candidate James Buchanan were among its notable guests. In the 1860s, the Democratic Party leased rooms in the Everett House for its headquarters in New York City.

In 1856, the Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper wrote: "Among our magnificent hotels, no one was more unostentatiously opened, or has gone on more steadily in establishing a high character than the Everett House".

In 1864, Hawley D. Clapp, recognized as the head of bounty brokers, was arrested and sent to Fort Lafayette.

In 1886, John G. Weaver, one of the proprietors of the Ocean House in Newport, Rhode Island, had completed arrangements for the purchase of the fixtures of the Everett House. When Weaver's brother Joseph died, a few years before, his interest in the Everett House was purchase by the other partner, Kerner, and in turn Weaver had bought out Kerner (New York Times, March 31, 1886) and took a lease of the Everett House for 10 years.

By 1895, Benjamin L. Bates was the proprietor of Everett House.

On December 24, 1906, the hotel manager was William H. Parke, when a bankruptcy petition was filled against Everett House Company, J.P. Flannery assumed as the new owner. The hotel closed shortly afterwards. The building was demolished in 1908, from June to August. In the same year, the 16-story Everett Building (200 Park Avenue South) was built and still stands on the site.