Wyndham New Yorker Hotel

skyscraper
art-deco
NY
New York

About the Wyndham New Yorker Hotel in New York
Architect and team
Architectureal style
Spaces and uses
Structure and materials

The Wyndham New Yorker Hotel is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Sugarman and Berger and built between 1928 and 1929, for a reported $22.5 million dollars, in New York, NY.

Its precise street address is 481 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

At the time of its completion in 1929 the Wyndham New Yorker Hotel incorporated solutions that were quite advanced at the time, these included a power plant and a boiler room in its basement, which was an early example of a cogeneration plant. The hotel was also amongst the first to have a radio receiver in each room.

The building has been restored 2 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 1999 and 2009.

Building's timeline

Construction begins

1928

Construction completed

1929

Restoration

1999

Restoration

2009

years ago

2024

1994 to 1999 - Structural improvements were made.
2007 to 2009 - renovations that increased the numbeer of rooms, expanded WiFi connectivity, added a conference room, improved the lobby and renovated the facade and ballroom. The architect in charge was Stonehill & Taylor Architects.

Architect and team

Sugarman and Berger was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

Sugarman and Berger was in charge of the architectural design, however, architecture is a complex discipline, which usually involves many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Wyndham New Yorker Hotel a reality:

Mack Kanner as the Main Developer
Lajos as the collaborating Artist

Architectural Style

The Wyndham New Yorker Hotel can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Art Deco movement flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, with many historians marking the outbreak of World War II as its final decline. Even though a couple of decades might not seem as much, the Art Deco movement had a great impact on architecture, and it's widely represented in many American cities due to the development boom that happened during that time.

Art Deco marked the abandonment of traditional historicism and the embracement of modern living and the age of the machine. In architecture, that meant leaving behind the ornaments of Beux-Arts and Neo-Gothic buildings and instead favoring simplicity and visual impact through geometric shapes, clean lines, and symmetrical designs. Ornaments were still an important part of the design, but they became bold and lavish, and were often inspired by ancient cultures or industrial imagery, instead of nature.

The Wyndham New Yorker Hotel was completed in 1929, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

Spaces & Uses

It has a total of 47 floors, 43 above ground and 4 basements, served by 23 elevators.

Ever since opening its doors to the public in 1929, the Wyndham New Yorker Hotel has mainly been used as Hotel space.

About the Hotel

The hotel is a 4 stars category hotel, with a total of 1083 rooms available to the public.

Materials & Structure

The Wyndham New Yorker Hotel uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade is non-load bearing either, as it is common in frame structure type buildings.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features Deer Island granite on the ground floor combined with Indiana limestone, from there on it continues with warm gray bricks and terra cotta. Cast stone masonry decorate the lower floors .

Other materials found at the Wyndham New Yorker Hotel include, red and black marble, used on the stairs to the second floor and some walls and columns, terrazzo , found on the upper floors's surfaces, and terrazzo , which can be found in partitions installed in the lobbies partitions.