Behind the Curtain Wall w/ NYC Architect Richard Roth Jr: The Palace Hotel
Discover what made The Palace Hotel such a divisive project, and how the architect overcame each obstacle!
Joe Holmes
Tuesday, May 6, 2025 Untapped New York ISSUE #1442
Every month this year, Untapped New York will release a new essay from Jo Holmes about the life and work of the late architect Richard Roth, Jr. of Emery Roth & Sons. Each essay explores a different building or developer from Richard’s career, intertwined with stories of his personal life and snippets of exclusive interviews conducted by Holmes and Untapped New York’s Justin Rivers (which can be viewed in our on-demand video archive). Check out the whole series here!
A Rare Opportunity
The Palace Hotel was a divisive project. Developers Harry and Leona Helmsley hit the headlines regularly in the late 20th century, for all the wrong reasons. Despite this, architect Richard Roth, Jr. of the family firm Emery Roth & Sons took on the challenge of designing a hotel tower for the Helmsleys, and by 1980, a 55-story dark bronze glass and aluminum building rose above the existing Gilded Age Villard Houses on the site.
The building has undergone several interior renovations since it was completed and is now known as The Lotte New York Palace Hotel. It has been described as ‘one of Manhattan’s most historically significant and luxurious hotels’ and ‘a unique merging of a 19th-century landmark mansion with a 20th-century high-rise tower.’Achieving that fusion successfully took careful handling on Richard’s part, both of the architecture and the clients.
A Historic Foundation In the 1880s, railway magnate Henry Villard commissioned the illustrious architecture firm of McKim, Mead & White to design an unusual building between 50th and 51st streets on Madison Avenue. Modeled on the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, the complex comprised six residences arranged in a U-shape around a courtyard. It was completed in 1884, just as Richard’s grandfather, Emery, arrived in the United States aged 13.
By 1974, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York had gradually acquired all the residences. At that point, the Archdiocese sold the air rights to developer Harry Helmsley and granted him a 99-year lease on the houses.
“Our first designs were for offices. But the banks said there were too many and they were too empty,” explained Richard. It was a generally tough time for developers and architects in New York. (Richard was traveling the world regularly to drum up business elsewhere.) Helmsley couldn’t raise the finance for his next idea of making half the building a hotel and the other half offices either, so he opted to just build a hotel.
Many people were, understandably, worried about the implications for the much-loved Villard Houses. “The project took longer than we had expected because we wound up before the Board of Estimate, before the City Council, before the Landmarks Preservation Commission, before every agency in the City of New York. And there was a group of people from the local community board who absolutely hated Harry Helmsley. Why, I don’t know,” explained Richard. “I had over 100 meetings with them!” said Richard.
All these negotiations had the positive impact of getting Helmsley to make greater efforts to preserve the Villard Houses. But ultimately, the community board couldn’t prevent a new development altogether, which they seemed to want to do. “At one meeting, the City Council members asked the community board members point blank: ‘If it was up to you and this was the most beautiful building in the world…would you still be against it?’ And they said, ‘Yes, we’d be against anything Harry Helmsley did,’” described Richard. “I turned to our lawyer, and I said, we just won…”
There was a point when the community board tried to sue everyone involved because the plans specified a 50-story building, but there was a sign on the site suggesting the building would be 55 floors (the discrepancy related to ‘mechanical’ floors without accommodation). “They even sued the guy who did the sign!” explained Richard. “That was a first!”
For Richard, incorporating the Villard Houses held great opportunities. The Archdiocese had used the Gold Room (originally a music room) in the main residence for religious services. “It was really something–very spectacular. The original idea was to tear it apart and make a dining room out of it. But I said: ‘This is the perfect lounge.’ I mean, what a great place for cocktails! It had a balcony, and I said you could put a string quartet up there and it would just be wonderful. So, we really turned the Archdiocese into a bar,” laughed Richard.
A Party at the Palace Hotel in the Gold Room, circa 1981, Courtesy of Robyn Roth-Moise
It’s illegal to serve hard liquor within a certain distance of the entrance to a church or a school. “We were on top of St Patrick’s Cathedral,” said Richard. “So, we had to measure the distance from the entrance of the hotel to the entrance of the cathedral. The Lady Chapel door at the back was nearest. We made it by three feet!”
St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the tower Richard Designed for the Palace Hotel
A Tricky Client
Harry Helmsley put Leona in charge of the project. She already had a reputation for being demanding and unpleasant, but Richard found he could ‘manage’ her.
“She liked the look of the Park Lane Hotel and wanted to use columns on the façade in the same way. We did the drawings and she loved it–we hated it. It was absolutely the wrong design,” said Richard. So, he got ‘the other side’ involved. He encouraged architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable to lobby to have the plans thrown out. “Leona never knew it and Harry never knew it…but one had to do things like that at times.”
Not long after the hotel opened in 1981, Richard went to a party in Harry Helmsley’s honor. “Leona beckoned me over and said: ‘I have three problems with the Palace Hotel.’” She explained the first two issues, which related to air conditioning and elevators. Richard told her he knew about these concerns, and they’d be resolved within a month.
Then it came to problem number three. “Leona said, ‘People are falling off the toilets…’ It took everything in me not to laugh!” remarked Richard. It so happened he had a friend who was staying there. “I called her and said, ‘Lizzie, can I come over and sit on your toilet?’ She said, ‘Sure, come on over.’ So, I went, and I sat on the toilet and the toilet seats were the cheapest piece of nonsense I’d ever seen. They were just terrible.” He checked his original specifications. “We’d spec’d the best toilet seats—made by a company called Church. I called Leona. Now, she had a deep resentment and hatred for Carl Morse who was head of Diesel Construction, who did all of Helmsley’s construction. Harry had a wonderful relationship with Carl—he trusted Carl.” Richard called Leona and explained it appeared Carl Morse had bought cheap toilets, not following the specifications. “There was this smile I could see through the telephone because she had something she could pin on Carl.”
Somewhat surprisingly, given the financial irregularities that would land Leona in jail, Richard said the Helmsleys always paid their bills on time. “Even though Leona had a notorious reputation for being difficult in all other ways, she was very good about paying her bills. We never had a problem with payment from Harry Helmsley ever, on anything.”
An Abrupt Ending Richard had some later encounters with Leona. “She owned the Holiday Inn on Longboat Key near Sarasota, Florida. After she got out of jail, she called me and said, ‘Richard, these architects down here are driving me crazy. You are the only architect I know who I respect and who will tell me the truth.’”
She wanted to add a floor to create an apartment for herself. Despite some health issues—Richard had had cancer a couple of years prior and was just recovering from a case of Legionnaires’ disease—he went down to see her, taking an engineer and an interior designer. Having investigated, Richard had to tell Leona it wouldn’t be possible to build her apartment without closing the hotel, which she couldn’t afford to do. This is likely what others had said, but she took it from Richard: “She trusted me.” But that wasn’t to last.
“About six months later, I’m getting ready to retire and move to the Bahamas. Leona calls me and says, ‘I bought the top floor of a building under construction, and I’ve dealt with five architects and none of them know what I want. I need you.’”
Richard decided it was a project his son, who was based in Miami, could manage once he himself had done the initial design. “I’d been living in the Bahamas for probably two months when I get a call from her lawyer. He says: ‘Richard, I have some very bad news for you: Leona wants me to fire you.’ I said, ‘That’s the best news I’ve had in years!’”
The job had proved frustrating. Richard asked the lawyer how long he’d worked for Leona. “He said, ‘Two months.’ I said, ‘That’s good because you got about three to go.’ There was dead silence, then he said, ‘Are you telling me she’s gonna fire me?’ I said, ‘No lawyer’s ever worked for her for more than six months.’ So, that was the end of my conversation with the lawyer and the end of my conversations with Leona.”
A Special Job While some may dislike the exterior of the hotel tower, many are happy that the historic houses survive to the extent they do. “It’s difficult to hide a 50-story building, so the looks of the building really took a simplistic form in trying to match the colour of the Villard Houses as best as possible,” said Richard. “But you can’t hide an elephant!”
It was built in an era when scandals swirled around real estate, but Richard felt he was able to maintain his integrity despite working with ‘the Queen of Mean.’ He enjoyed working with Harry and loved the Palace Hotel. For him, there was never any intention to overshadow, detract, or distract from the Villard Houses. “You couldn’t have designed a better entry than having this wonderful garden in front and these huge arches that led you into the hotel. I mean it was an architect’s dream…it really made this something very special.”
PHOTO OF THE DAY
THE NEW Maker LAB
was officially opened on Friday. A space innovation, creation and designing
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
From Horse Stables to Police Station, the Evolution of one of the Oldest Buildings in Central Park
Monday, May 5 2025 Ephemeral New York ISSUE #1441
One of the marvels of Central Park is that so many of the early buildings within its 843 acres, completed during or just after the park’s opening in the 1850s, have been repurposed over time.
The Dairy, where children could get safe, fresh milk, is now a visitors center. The Sheepfold, where the park’s 200 resident sheep sheltered, became Tavern on the Green in 1934. The Arsenal, which predates the park and served as the first menagerie, houses park administrative space. Then there’s this low, long storybook confection of stone, slate, and dormer windows (above photo). The Victorian-style building and a cottage next door sit on the south side of the 86th Street transverse—brick and mortar dwellings interrupting the lush greenery along this winding sunken thoroughfare.
Like the Dairy and Sheepfold, they were put up with specific functions in mind. The long building served as a stable for cart horses, which likely pulled carts and wagons for park employees tasked with construction and maintenance.
The designer behind the stable and cottage was Jacob Wrey Mould. This British-born architect doesn’t get as much credit as he should for his aesthetic contributions to Central Park.
Working with Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux to bring their Greenward Plan to life, Mould designed Belvedere Castle, the nature-inspired carvings on Bethesda Terrace, the Sheepfold, and many of the bridge
In 1870, Mould (below left) was made head architect for the Department of Public Works. A year later, his stables and cottage were completed (above photo).
Though not as ornate as the sheepfold, the stable “bears the mark of architectural distinction” thanks to the “loping rhythm of the dormers, and high level of craftsmanship,” noted Francis R, Kowsky, co-author with Lucille Gordon of Jacob Wrey Mould and the Artful Beauty of Central Park.
Inside was room for 26 horses as well as repair shops and storage areas, wrote Kowsky. The stable shared the site with a structure—perhaps the cottage—built for park keepers, an early incarnation of the park police, per the Central Park Conservatory.
Office space for the Central Park Board of Commissioners was planned.
“The new offices would have included ‘engineering, architectural, and gardening apartments,’” and “a separate building to house blacksmiths, carpenters, and other craftspeople,” according to a 2023 post by Cynthia Brenwall at the NYC Department of Records & Information Services.
Also on the site was a house built for the reservoir keeper, whose job was to keep an eye on the two reservoirs flanking the transverse, one pre-existing the park and one built by Olmsted and Vaux.
What was the reservoir keeper looking out for? Think maintenance issues and suicide victims, per a 2002 New York Times article by Christopher Gray.
Into the early 20th century, the stable, cottage, and reservoir keeper’s house remained part of the parkscape. But when the pre-existing reservoir was decommissioned in 1929 and replaced by the Great Lawn in 1936 (with landfill from the digging out of Rockefeller Center), the keeper’s house was demolished.
Meanwhile, the stable and cottage were about to undergo a transformation. The park keepers who had patrolled the park in its early years had transitioned into a New York Police Department precinct, with the Arsenal serving as its precinct house, per the Central Park Conservatory.
In 1936, the cart horses were cleared out of the stable and the precinct took over. Renovated in the early 2000s, the Central Park Precinct house—a lovely survivor of the park’s early years in the late 19th century—is the oldest NYPD station in New York City.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
THE NEW Maker LAB
was officially opened on Friday. A space innovation, creation and designing
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
Macy’s Flower Show turns 50 with surrealist gardens and thousands of blooms in Herald Square
Friday, May 2, 2025 6sqft ISSUE #1440
The 50th annual Macy’s Flower Show opened in Herald Square on Sunday, transforming the iconic department store into a breathtaking garden filled with thousands of lush plants and flowers. In honor of its semicentennial, this year’s event has been extended to three weeks of festivities, running through May 18. The show also features a partnership with YSL Beauty, offering an immersive experience that encourages guests to embrace freedom and celebrate the transformative power of nature.
For five decades, the cherished event has given visitors a chance to witness thousands of vibrant flowers blooming together across the store’s famed window displays, balconies, and main floor.
The show debuted in California in 1946 to promote fragrances in the cosmetics department before coming to Herald Square in 1975 and quickly becoming a beloved yearly tradition, as 6sqft previously reported.
Hours of careful work go into producing the spectacle, which features 8,000 plants and 50,000 stems that blend together in banana-yellow blooms, pink swirls, and purple necklaces, according to the New York Times. Each night, watering the display takes approximately six to nine hours, as workers carefully climb ladders to reach plants tucked into high and hard-to-access corners of the department store. The installation is designed to conform to the building’s unique interior—”defined generations ago” by architects and engineers—with each pillar encased in “column surrounds” that are first wrapped in cloud-printed blue vinyl and then adorned with layers of vibrant flowers, according to Will Coss, the Macy’s executive who oversees events like the Flower Show, in an interview with Times.
This year’s show features an immersive installation from YSL Beauty, “Beauty Art of Flowers.” The exhibition invites visitors into a world where natural beauty reigns and challenges the norm. The experience begins outside, where guests are greeted by colorful floral decorations adorning Macy’s 34th Street facade.
Inside, the journey continues with a bold landscape showcasing the main olfactive notes in YSL Beauty’s new Libre L’eau Nue line—the brand’s first alcohol-free citrus floral scent. According to a press release, the scent uses unique oil-in-water “fragrance proprietary technology.”
Guests then move through an engaging blue space inspired by Y, where fresh sage and stunning blue geranium flowers surround and excite onlookers. The journey culminates in a pop-up boutique, where guests can try YSL’s new Loveshine Plumping Lip Oil Gloss.
Visitors will also receive gifted lily-filled bouquets, couture personalization exclusive to Macy’s Flower Show, on-site bottle engraving and watercolor art, and limited-edition flower charms.
“YSL Beauty US is thrilled to be partnering with Macy’s for their 2025 Flower Show, a true retail statement from an iconic retailer. Flowers, in their daring and raw beauty, are at the heart of our products, but also our brand—and have served as a constant source of inspiration for M. Saint Laurent,” Juliette Ferret, U.S. general manager at YSL Beauty, said.
“They represent the vulnerability, beauty, and possibility in our world, which we try to always amplify. The YSL Beauty Art of Flowers experience epitomizes the spirit and vision of the brand and we’re honored to bring this to life
Other exciting partnerships for this year’s show include Lego Bloom and Beyond, an intricate, floral-themed display, a mosaic wall, and flower carts showcasing Lego Botanicals. Visitors can also participate in a “brick in hand” build experience called “Build-a-Bloom” on select days.
Additionally, Holland American Line will celebrate over 150 years of its history with a wave-inspired tulip garden that flows throughout the store, inspired by vibrant spring tulip fields.
This year’s event also includes a dedicated Macy’s Flower Show and Surrealist Garden product collection, celebrating the vibrant color experiences featured throughout the display. The collection offers exclusive items such as home goods, jewelry, and sleepwear, along with special collaborations with brands like Kendra Scott, MarieBelle, and Lovery.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Flags flying at the Kiosk!!!!
CREDITS
JUDITH BERDY
6sqft
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
This memo came out today announcing repairs to Main Street, Though, they are temporary it will be an improvement especially to the crosswallks. See the memo below:
Dear Roosevelt Island Community,
Starting Monday, May 5, RIOC will begin performing necessary maintenance work on Main Street between 510 Main Street and 580 Main Street. This work will temporarily impact traffic and parking in the area, and is expected to last through Wednesday, May 14.
What to Know
RIOC will be addressing persistent problem areas along Main Street where the road surface has become uneven and hazardous. We will be removing sections of z-brick and replacing them with a new asphalt surface that is safer for both motorists and pedestrians.
Although this work is not part of the major Roadways Project currently underway, it is an important interim step needed to improve traffic safety.
Work hours: Weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Impacts to Parking
There will be NO PARKING for ANY vehicles, including those with placards, between 501 Main Street and 571 Main Street, from Monday, May 5 through Wednesday, May 14.
This restriction allows for the creation of two temporary lanes in the southbound lane to accommodate traffic during construction. Motorists who typically park in this area are encouraged to use Motorgate Garage during this period.
Impacts to Traffic
During construction, the northbound lane of Main Street between 510 and 580 Main Street will be closed. The southbound lane will be temporarily converted into two-way traffic using the cleared parking lane.
Flaggers and Public Safety Department (PSD) officers will be on-site to monitor and assist with traffic and pedestrian safety.
Impacts to Pedestrians
As part of this work, the crosswalk at Good Shepherd Chapel will be replaced. The current z-brick crosswalk will be removed and replaced with a level asphalt surface for improved safety.
During this time, the crosswalk will be periodically closed to pedestrians. However, the sidewalks along the work route will remain open and accessible.
If the full scope of work is completed ahead of schedule, RIOC will reopen the northbound lane and restore parking as soon as possible.
Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.
– RIOC Maintenance
*RIOC agrees to permit visitors and residents to use bathrooms in Sportspark. SInce Sportspark re-opened a few years ago, the staff there would not permit non members to use their bathrooms.
At the Visitor Center we repeaetedly asked RIOC to change the rules. It is not fair to have facilities in a public building that are limited to members only.
At last night’s Operations Meeting, Mary Cunneen, RIOC’s Chief Operating Officer agreed to change the rules, that visitors use the bathrooms and the signs advising otherwise would be removed.
We now have signage on the kiosk doors advising of the availabilty. See below:
Thanks, Mary!!
PUBLIC BATHROOMS
ARE AVAILABLE
AT
SPORTSPARK
250 MAIN STREET
WALK UNDER BRIDGE,
BUILDING ON THE LEFT
THANK YOU
And finally, a push to have precast concrete toilets installed at Firefighters’ Field. This need was presented to the RIOC Operations Committee and hopefully this need will become a reality. Below is a link to a company that can provide attractive units to the island ball field.
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated THIS PUBLICATION FUNDED BY DISCRETIONARY FUNDS FROM CITY COUNCIL MEMBER JULIE MENIN & ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDS.
