Brian Harkin for The New York Times The Park Central Hotel, where Eleanor Roosevelt and Jackie Gleason once lived, has undergone a renovation.Don Fraser has a long-playing record â€" something people listened to before everything went digital â€" that was issued before Eddie Layton became the organist at Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden in the 1960s. The album describes Layton as the “tireless star of the exquisite Mermaid Room†in the Park Central Hotel.
Mr. Fraser is the hotel’s general manager, and he has other keepsakes that convey its history. He knows it was home to the likes of Jackie Gleason and Eleanor Roosevelt. He knows, too, that it was home to a radio station, WPCH (named for Park Central Hotel), but the station had a problem reaching listeners. The neon sign on the roof interfered with the broadcast antenna.
And he has old menus from the hotel’s restaurant. One from October 1960 lists “Maine lobster cocktail†for $1.75 and a room service charge of 35 cents a person.
All of this came up because the hotel, on Seventh Avenue at 55th Street, has undergone a top-to-bottom renovation that he said was sensitive to the hotel’s long life. “We’ve been keeping to the historical footprint, with a spin, which is exciting,†Mr. Fraser said.
The hotel’s new look is the work of Jeffrey Beers International, an architecture and design firm. The renovation put the front desk front and center, which was possible because the lobby was shortened. In the guest rooms, the bathroom walls have been painted red and the porcelain tiles have been arranged in what the hotel described as “a piano-like pattern†as a playful homage to Carnegie Hall, diagonally across Seventh Avenue from the hotel.
An undated postcard shows a swimming pool at the hotel in what is now an event space.A new restaurant occupies a two-level space that had been broken up years ago, so the restaurant has a high ceiling with a mezzanine. That is reminiscent of the Mermaid Room, a onetime fixture at the Park Central that operated as a restaurant until about 9:30 p.m. and as a nightclub until closing time.
The renovation did not bring back the Mermaid Room’s most noticeable feature, the mermaids on the ceiling. In the 1950s they, or more precisely, their nakedness, prompted a complaint from Mrs. Roosevelt, who lived at the hotel from 1950 to 1953 and again in 1958.
The hotel’s response to her grievance was a cover-up. It gave the mermaids brassieres made from fishing nets.
The hotel has a new “grab and go†cafe serving sandwiches and coffee, and meeting rooms with newly exposed windows. (They had been covered with plasterboard for years.)
Mr. Fraser said the Park Central had not undergone a major makeover in nine years, a long time in the world of hotels. This has been a busy year for refurbishing hotels in New York. Loews Regency Hotel on Park Avenue shut down at the beginning of the year for renovations, and the New York Palace, on Madison Avenue overlooking St. Patrick’s Cathedral, is also getting a complete face-lift.
At the Park Central, the work was done without closing down. “A guest checked out at noon and we did the carpet in that room,†Mr. Fraser said.
The hotel opened in 1927 with 1,600 rooms. It was downsized to 1,450 rooms in the 1980s but remained the fifth-largest hotel in the city, according to Mr. Fraser. It was downsized again, to 950 rooms by 2004, and it now has 761.
That last drop in the room count was subtraction of the simplest kind: The rooms were taken away from the Park Central and allotted to a separate new, higher-priced hotel, WestHouse, that will use an entrance on West 55th Street. The WestHouse’s Web site says it will have 172 bedrooms and suites. The WestHouse is taking reservations for mid-November.
There is one other element of the Park Central’s past: The mob murders. Arnold Rothstein, the gambler who is said to have plotted to fix the 1919 World Series, was found shot to death in a third-floor room in 1928. The Park Central is also where the mob boss Albert Anastasia was assassinated in 1957 as he relaxed in a barber’s chair.
“The perfect crime,†Mr. Fraser said. “Never been solved.†He added that the barber shop, now a Starbucks coffee shop, closed soon after the shooting. The hotel’s owners at the time pushed the barber shop out, he said.
Brian Harkin for The New York Times The Park Central’s remodeled lobby. 