James W. Rhodes Collection of Villard House/New York Palace Hotel Project Records
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Abstract
This collection includes documents, photographs and drawings relating to the restoration of McKim, Mead & White's Villard Houses, and their incorporation into the Palace Hotel tower constructed in 1981.
Biographical / Historical
The Villard Houses were commissioned in 1882 by railroad financier Henry Villard. Villard hired prominent architects McKim, Mead & White to design a unified complex of six mansions on Madison Avenue at 51st Street. Using Rome's Palazzo della Cancelleria as its inspiration, the firm created a U-shaped Italian Renaissance palace; four of the homes opened onto the courtyard while two had entrances on 51st Street. Within the restrained, uniform exterior, each homes was uniquely and elaborately decorated. All six homes were completed in 1884.
Soon after, Villard lost his fortune and was forced to sell his new mansion, but the Villard Houses were maintained as grand residences through the 1920's. Eventually, as the owners died off, the buildings passed into business and corporate hands. In 1943, the mansion originally occupied by Villard was turned into the Women's Military Services Club, and was rented to service women for 50 cents a night. By the late 1960's, Random House owned one of the original mansions, and the Archdiocese of New York owned the rest of the complex.
In 1968, without opposition from the owners, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the complex a landmark. The following year, Random House left and in 1971, the archbishopric purchased its former quarters. Having consolidated its own operations in a less valuable building, the archbishopric sought to raise money by leasing or developing the Villard Houses.
In 1974, the developer Harry Helmsley proposed a 51-story hotel, called the Palace, for the site. The plan called for the rear of the Villard Houses to be demolished and the interiors gutted. When preservationists protested, Helmsley revised his plans, agreeing to save most of the interiors and revising the facade of the new hotel to better integrate with the landmarked mansion.
After lengthy negotiations involving the City Landmarks Commission, The City Planning Commission, Community Planning Board #5, and other groups interested in preservation, an agreement was reached which allowed the project to move forward. Helmsley commissioned architects Emery Roth & Sons to design the modern structure and integrate the 1884 houses. James W. Rhodes, a young architect who had recently supervised the restoration and adaptation of Andrew Carnegie's Fifth Avenue mansion for the Cooper-Hewitt-Smithsonian Museum of Design for Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, was hired as project manager to oversee restoration of the Villard Houses. In accordance with the negotiated preservation agreements, Rhodes was also charged with measuring, recording and documenting the houses for the Historical American Building Survey.
The architects devised an adaptive re-use plan which incorporated the face of the Villard Houses into the new hotel, while the wings of the building were given over to non-profit organizations; original tenants included the Urban Center, the Landmarks Conservancy, and the Municipal Arts Society. The project was completed in 1980.
Arrangement
This collection is organized by format into the following five series:
Series I: Documents
Series II: Photographic prints
Series III: Negatives
Series IV: Transparencies, Adaptive Re-Use Plan & Tenant Layout
Series V: Architectural drawings
Scope and Contents
This collection consists of documents, photographs, and architectural drawings relating to the restoration and adaptive re-use of the landmark Villard Houses as part of the Palace Hotel (completed in 1981), and documentation of the project for the Historic American Buildings Survey.
Series I, Documents, includes contracts, applications and other legal documents; field surveys of the Villard Houses; press releases; and a few pieces of correspondence and office ephemera. Also included are a few magazine articles describing the project.
Series II, Photographic prints, consists primarily of photographs documenting conditions at the Villard House prior to the commencement of restoration, including many taken by Steven Zane as part of the Historic American Buildings Survey. There are also a number of photographs by noted architectural photographer Cervin Robinson, and a series of stereopair photographs by Perry and Myra Borchers.
Series III, Negatives, includes film negatives of Steven Zane's photographs for the American Historic Buildings Survey, as well as a few Cervin Robinson negatives.
Series IV, Transparencies, includes plans and photographs illustrating Emory Roth & Sons' Adaptive Re-Use Plan & Tenant Layout that were apparently used for an overhead projection presentation.
Series V, Architectural drawings, includes two sets of the 34 plans of the Villard Houses produced for the Historical American Buildings Survey, housed at the Library of Congress, along with other drawings of the site and buildings.
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Conditions Governing Access
Materials in this collection may be stored offsite. For more information on making arrangements to consult them, please visit www.nyhistory.org/library/visit.
Conditions Governing Use
Taking images of documents from the library collections for reference purposes by using hand-held cameras and in accordance with the library's photography guidelines is encouraged. As an alternative, patrons may request up to 20 images per day from staff.
Application to use images from this collection for publication should be made in writing to: Department of Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024-5194, rightsandrepro@nyhistory.org. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 282.
Copyrights and other proprietary rights may subsist in individuals and entities other than the New-York Historical Society, in which case the patron is responsible for securing permission from those parties. For fuller information about rights and reproductions from N-YHS visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/about/rights-reproductions
Preferred Citation
This collection should be cited as: James W. Rhodes Collection of Villard House/Palace Hotel Project Records, PR 296, Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections, The New-York Historical Society.
Location of Materials
Provenance
Gift of James W. Rhodes, 2013.
Related Materials at the New-York Historical Society
Additional materials relating to the Villard Houses will be found in the McKim, Mead & White Architectural Records Collection, PR 42.