Hotel NH Collection New York: A 1920s social hub reborn

On the corner of Madison Avenue and East 38th Street, NH Collection New York Madison Avenue occupies a building that has watched Manhattan change for more than a century. Long before it became a contemporary hotel, this red-brick tower started life in the early 1920s as the Fraternity Clubs Building, a residence and social club for college men in New York. Opened in 1924, it was designed in a Renaissance Revival style by architects Murgatroyd & Ogden, with towers, arched windows and an Italianate loggia that still give the façade its distinctive silhouette today.

Back then, it wasn’t a hotel at all but a vertical clubhouse. Inside were squash and handball courts, a gym, Turkish baths, billiard rooms, lounges, a large dining room and even a roof garden. More than a dozen university clubs took up residence; members came here to eat, exercise and socialise, then retreated to compact bedrooms on the upper floors. It was, in many ways, an early experiment in co-living, decades before the term existed.