The New Yorker Hotel is a mixed-use building at 481 Eighth Avenue in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1930, the building was designed by Sugarman & Berger in the Art Deco style and is 42 stories high, with four basement stories. The building is owned by the Unification Church of the United States, which rents out the lower stories as offices and dormitories. The upper stories comprise the hotel, which has 1,083 guestrooms and has been operated by Lotte Hotels since 2025. The building also contains three restaurants and approximately of conference space.
The facade is largely made of brick and terracotta, with Indiana limestone on the lower stories. There are setbacks to comply with the 1916 Zoning Resolution, as well as a large sign with the hotel's name. The building contains a power plant and boiler room in its fourth basement, which was an early example of a cogeneration plant. The public rooms on the lower stories included a Manufacturers Trust bank branch, a double-height lobby, and multiple ballrooms and restaurants. Originally, the hotel had 2,503 guestrooms from the fourth story up.
The New Yorker was built by Mack Kanner and was originally operated by Ralph Hitz, who died in 1940 and was succeeded by Frank L. Andrews. Hilton Hotels bought the building in 1954 and, after conducting extensive renovations, sold it in 1956 to Massaglia Hotels. New York Towers Inc. acquired the building in 1959 but surrendered the property to Hilton in 1967 as part of a foreclosure proceeding. The hotel was closed in 1972 and sold to the French and Polyclinic Medical School and Health Center, which unsuccessfully attempted to develop a hospital there. The Unification Church purchased the building in 1976 and initially used it as a global headquarters. After the top stories of the building reopened as a hotel in 1994, the lower stories were used as offices and dormitories. The hotel rooms have undergone multiple renovations since the hotel reopened. The New Yorker joined the Ramada chain in 2000, then it was transferred to the Wyndham brand in 2014 and to Lotte in 2025.
Site The New Yorker Hotel is at 481 Eighth Avenue, occupying the western side of the avenue between 34th Street and 35th Street, in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The land lot is rectangular and covers . It has a frontage of on Eighth Avenue to the west and on both 34th Street to the south and 35th Street to the north. Manhattan Center abuts the hotel to the west, while One Penn Plaza, Madison Square Garden, and Pennsylvania Station are to the southeast. Just prior to the New Yorker's development, the site was occupied by 17 buildings, owned by Frederick Brown and the Manufacturers Trust Company. When the New Yorker was built, a bank branch for Manufacturers Trust was constructed at its base.
Architecture The New Yorker Hotel was designed by Sugarman and Berger and is 42 stories high. The New Yorker Hotel also has four basement levels. Much like the contemporary Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, the New Yorker was designed in the Art Deco style, which was popular in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s.
Form and facade The New Yorker has a relatively plain facade. The first story of the hotel is clad with of Deer Island granite. The second through fourth stories are clad with Indiana Limestone. The lowest stories are decorated with cast-stone blocks that contain floral designs. There are also some geometric designs on these stories. The hotel also contains marquees above its entrances on Eighth Avenue and 34th Street. Above each marquee is a LED sign that could change color during special occasions.
The fifth through 43rd stories are clad in face brick with some terracotta ornament. The facade mainly consists of vertical bays of windows, separated by vertical gray-brick piers. According to architect Robert A. M. Stern, the alternating bays and piers gave "an impression of boldly modeled masses. This was furthered by the deep-cut light courts, which produced a powerful play of light and shade that was enhanced by dramatic lighting at night". The building contains setbacks to comply with the 1916 Zoning Resolution. The setbacks, characterized by architectural writer Anthony W. Robins as "blocky", are ornamented with stone parapets that contain floral and rhombus patterns.
The western facade contains a sign with the name "New Yorker" in capital letters. The original sign was illuminated from 1941 to 1967. The sign was dark until 2005, when it was replaced with an LED sign manufactured by LED Solution of Kitchener, Ontario. The sign can be seen from northern New Jersey, across the Hudson River to the west. Each of the letters can be illuminated separately, allowing the sign to display various messages on special occasions such as celebrations.
Mechanical features The hotel contained 23 elevators when it opened. Of these, 12 were passenger elevators, six were service elevators, and two were freight elevators. There was also one elevator from ground level to the subway station; one elevator from ground level to the ballroom; and one elevator within a bank branch in the building.
Power plant The hotel contains a power plant and boiler room on its fourth basement, which could support the needs of 35,000 daily guests at the time of the hotel's opening. When the New Yorker opened, it was one of the few large buildings in New York City with its own power plant. The power plant included four uniflow steam engines and one diesel engine. One of the steam engines was rated at , while the others were rated at . Each of the engines drove a direct current generator. The power plant was operated from a switchboard measuring long and high. The switchboard contained manual pushbuttons; one button crushed coal that was blown into the furnaces, while another button deposited ashes.
When the hotel opened, the power plant contained more than 200 direct current motors, rated at a combined . The plant could generate up to , but the hotel only used on average. It was anticipated that the excess electricity would be sold to nearby buildings, but this did not happen. At the time, this was the largest private power plant in the United States, as well as an early example of a cogeneration plant. The power plant saved the hotel's operators an estimated $48,000 per year. In 2008, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers designated the New Yorker Hotel's direct current power plant as a Milestone in Electrical Engineering; at the time, the hotel was one of 75 worldwide recipients of that award.
The hotel's own direct current generators were still in use during the Northeast blackout of 1965. The hotel's power system had been modernized to alternating current by 1967. Due to increased energy costs, four cogeneration units were installed in the hotel in 2001, providing 50 percent of the hotel's electricity in the summer and 80 percent in the winter. The cogeneration plant has a total capacity of . The building also purchases electricity from New York City's power grid, operated by Consolidated Edison. The cogeneration plant reduced the hotel's reliance on the power grid, saving an estimated $400,000 annually by 2009.
Other utilities The three largest motors in the original power plant were each capable of and supplied three of the hotel's four chillers (the fourth chiller was supplied by a steam engine). The ice plant was capable of making 400,000 blocks of ice per day. The modern-day hotel receives ice from a chiller plant in a neighboring building; the chillers produce ice at night, when energy costs are lower. The chiller plant replaced air conditioners that were installed within the windows of 2,000 rooms.
Steam exhaust from the original power plant was used for functions such as heating. All services that used heat, such as cooking equipment, laundry machines, lights, vacuum cleaners, refrigeration, and air conditioning units were supplied by steam from the power plant. A boiler plant was installed at the New Yorker in 1998, reducing the need to buy steam from the New York City steam system. The boiler plant, which cost $1.5 million to install, saved an average of $3 million annually by 2009. Following a renovation in 2009, the hotel was retrofitted with a four-pipe system of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), allowing guests to set their own temperature settings.
Most of the building's modern-day hot water supply comes from the cogeneration plant. The building contains a storage tank with a capacity of . Water from the tank is transferred into the cogeneration units. There are water tanks on the 25th, 35th, and 44th stories. Sewage is pumped from the basements to the New York City sewage system, and a sump pump supplies soapy warm water to the hotel's restaurants.
Interior The New Yorker spans . The original hotel contained public rooms on its first through fourth stories, as well as guestrooms from the fourth story to the roof. Lajos "Louis" Jambor had painted 26 murals for the hotel's interior, which cost a total of $150,000 (). The public rooms, originally decorated in the Art Deco style, were redecorated in various styles over the years. Many of Jambor's murals were covered up during the mid-20th century. When the New Yorker reopened as a commercial hotel in 1994, its guestrooms were concentrated on the upper stories, while the lower stories remained in use as offices. The building also contains two restaurants and approximately of conference space.
The hotel has four basement levels. The first basement contained the kitchen, which had a dishwashing room; divisions for fish, meat, and poultry; an ice cream room; and a pastry room. On the second basement level were a linen room and valet shop, while on the third basement was the laundry room. The lowest of the hotel's basements contained the power plant.
Bank branch
There was a Manufacturers Trust bank branch on the first basement and second floor, designed by Sugarman and Berger. The branch's main entrance was a carved bronze door leading to a lobby, where stairs led up to the second floor and down to the basement. The stairs to the second floor were made of red and black marble and were decorated with a pair of murals by Jambor, which symbolized industry and commerce. The banking room itself had a terrazzo floor and marble walls and columns, as well as large windows on 34th Street. The room contained glass tellers' desks made of bronze and glass, and there was a department for the bank's officers on the eastern wall. The banking room was surrounded by a mezzanine on three sides. The soffit under the mezzanine was made of wood, and there were various pieces of marble furniture. The second floor also contained a women's lounge and service rooms for the bank.
From the ground-floor lobby, a terrazzo stair with an iron railing led to the safe-deposit department in the basement. The entrance to the safe-deposit department was through a wrought-iron grille with the bank's initials. The space itself contained coupon desks and a private conference room, all with wood paneling. The bank branch was closed during the 1980s and was abandoned for several decades. By 2017, the old safe-deposit department had been converted into the Butcher and Banker restaurant. The restaurant retained many of the bank's original design features, such as the vault door and safe-deposit drawers.
Public rooms