![]() In its estimation, the Hotel Pennsylvania, which had undergone significant changes over the years, fell short. In assessing the merits of a building as a potential landmark, the commission studies its architectural, historical and cultural significance, as well as the level of integrity of the original design. The foundation was working to block any demolition by asking the Landmarks Preservation Commission to consider the hotel for landmark status. Resolved to act, the teenager found and joined the Save the Hotel Pennsylvania Foundation, a small group led by a computer specialist named Gregory Jones. “All hell broke loose in my brain,” he recalled. He felt a swirl of sadness, anger and urgency. That moment is seared in the memory of Steven Lepore, now 28. Remember that hotel you like so much? The one across from Penn Station? They’re going to knock it down. One evening in the fall of 2007, in the Long Island town of Deer Park, a father came across some news on his desktop computer, and he called out to his 13-year-old son: Hey, Steven. The annual meeting of the First District Dental Society of New York. Gem-and-mineral shows, bridge tournaments, city auctions, dog shows. The dinners and conventions, at least, never stopped. A closeout retail store set up residence in what had been the Café Rouge, and the once-grand ballroom became a television studio for such fare as “Maury” and “The People’s Court.” In the mid-1990s, a Sports Authority megastore took over most of the mezzanine. In the late 1980s, the Barbizon school of modeling moved in. ![]() Seventy years later, the circumstances remain murky.Īs the years passed, the struggling hotel did what it could. It was later revealed that he had been slipped LSD as part of an illegal mind-control program overseen by the C.I.A. Among the odder moments came when a government bacteriologist named Frank Olson plunged to his death from the 10th floor in 1953. The atmosphere changed as well a weariness, even a weirdness, set in. There were repeated changes in ownership and name: the Hotel Statler, the Statler Hilton, the New York Statler, on and on, before eventually returning to the Hotel Pennsylvania. The postwar years were less kind to the hotel, as fewer overnighters arrived by train and more people chose watching television over frequenting nightclubs. Les Brown and His Band of Renown, featuring a young Doris Day taking a war-weary nation on a sentimental journey.
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