Pabst Hotel, 42nd Street, Broadway e 7th Avenue

The old 9-story Pabst Hotel occupied the north side of 42nd Street, between Broadway and 7th Avenue (1469 Broadway / 603 Seventh Avenue / 153 42nd St.), on part of the site where the Times Building was constructed in 1903-1904.

Pabst Hotel building was constructed from October 1898 to November 11, 1899, when it opened as a bachelor's hotel. It stood on the site until November 1902, when the buildings on the block began to be demolished to make way for the Times Building. These buildings were acquired by the New York Times in August 1902. Continue below...

Pabst Hotel was built by the Pabst Brewing Company, founded in 1844 in Winsconsin. By 1893, Pabst became the first brewer in the United States to sell more than a million barrels of beer in a year. The Company was expanding in the 1890s, acquiring restaurants and hotels. In New York, in the early 1900s there were the Pabst Loop Hotel in Coney Island, Pabst Harlem Music Hall and Restaurant and the Pabst Grand Circle Hotel and Restaurant.

The brewing company leased the building from Charles Thorley, who built it on ground leased from Henry Dolan for five 21-year terms. Thorley leased it to the company for the remainder of the first term in 1899. Pabst leased it to Jame B. Regan, who ran it as proprietor.

Architect Henry F. Kilburn (1844-1905) designed this nine-story tower with a steel frame and limestone cladding. Construction began in October 1898 and the hotel opened in November 11, 1899. The building's site was small, 58 feet wide by 25 feet deep, but the restaurant, on the second floor, and the rathskeller, in the basement, were not confined by the property lines. The rathskeller used space under the sidewalks and the restaurant extended over the 42nd Street portico built on the sidewalk, without proper authorization.

On April 15, 1902, the subway company took possession of the entire cellar beneath the Broadway side of the building and about half of the space beneath the sidewalk on 42nd Street, for tunnel purposes. The New York Times acquired the lease of the property in August, the same year. Demolition began on November 24 and it lasted until the early 1903, when its walls served to place outdoors for theaters (photo below). This was a foreshadowing of what Times Building would become in the 1990s, when it, too, became just walls for billboards.

On the right, Pabst Hotel in the process of demolition, with its façade serving as billboards, which showed what some theaters presented in early 1903. Victoria Theatre in the background presented Viola Allen in "The Eternal City". This production opened on November 17, 1902, and closed in February 1903. An advertising in the lower right corner of the photo indicated this production was in the last weeks (photo by Robert L. Bracklow, from Digital Culture of Metropolitan New York).