ICONS WANTED: Welcome to the Ansonia

The Ansonia

2019 Broadway

New York, NY 10023

Thank you for touring The Ansonia with me! This made the list for many reasons which I will share with you now.. follow my web channel - Visit the Icons Wanted Web Series

The Ansonia is a now residential building that was built in 1899 (completed in 1904) in the Upper West Side originally commissioned to be the “grandest hotel in Manhattan” by the Phelps-Dodge Copper heir, William Earle Dodge Stokes, and the design to be inspired by the hotels in Paris. The Copper heir had a “Utopian vision” for the building.

Among the ballrooms, restaurants, “Turkish baths and a lobby fountain with live seals”, the residents also received fresh eggs daily (from the chickens on the roof!) and a professional chef at their request. As for the apartments themselves… they were designed with high ceilings, parlors, libraries, elegant molding, bay windows and it was the first hotel in New York with air conditioning!

An interesting fact, during World War II the hotel’s copper extremities were melted down and used for the war effort.

In the late 1900's the basement was a gay bathhouse where Bette Midler performed early in her career along with her pianist - thee Barry Manilow. Being that the famous Mobster Arnold Rothstein and White Sox Arnold 'Chick' Gandil both lived in this building, they constructed the meetings to take down the 1919 World Series in Chick's very own apartment!

Angelina Jolie, Babe Ruth and Igor Stravinsky lived here as well.. does that mean Coco Chanel might have dined or visited here?!

If you can, please take a look in person for this building is stunning and larger than life. The last story I will share (still researching this too) but I heard from a good source that the Nazi's were having a party in the ballroom here one night and a group tried to blow it up - even having bombs in the building ready to go, however with no success.

ABC created a show that I personally loved (now canceled) called 666 Park Avenue. Sticking to the facts, a native New Yorker would know right away that Park Avenue is located on the Upper East Side. If you dig a little deeper, 666 Park Avenue not only is real but is also a subset of 660 Park Avenue and according to The New York Times, “built in 1927 for an owner who never occupied it”. Oddly, this was much the norm for the extremely wealthy back then.