This month in real estate history

First hotel for single working women opens, Empire State Building rises, and WTC recovers after bombing

Lobby of the Martha Washington Hotel in 1907
Lobby of the Martha Washington Hotel in 1907

1903: Martha Washington Hotel opens 

The Martha Washington Hotel, the first hotel built in New York to cater to single professional women, opened its doors at 29 East 29th Street 113 years ago this month. Touted as ideal for women and girls traveling solo, the 12-story hotel was immediately booked up, with over 200 women on the waiting list, the New York Times reported. All told, the hotel’s apartments accommodated 500 permanent guests and 150 temporary guests. While the weekly rent for permanent guests was between $3 and $17, temporary guests paid anywhere from $1 to $3.50 a day, plus an additional $6 for meals. The tenants included working women, including teachers, bookkeepers, stenographers, musicians and physicians. The owner of the hotel, Women’s Hotel Company, promised 5 percent returns for its investors, many of whom were female. While the hotel was exclusively for women, both women and men were employed at the hotel, a rarity at the time. The Martha Washington Hotel remained a women-only establishment until 1998. After that, it operated as a regular hotel under several different names. The building, which was designed in a renaissance revival style by architect Robert W. Gibson, was declared a New York City Landmark in 2012. The hotel has since been restored by King & Grove Hotels and now boasts its original name.

1930: Work begins on Empire State Building 

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Empire State Building

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Construction of the Empire State Building began this month 86 years ago. The now-iconic building, which rose at a rate of four-and-a-half stories per week, was designed to be 1,222 feet, which was 200 feet taller than the highest existing skyscraper at the time, the New York Times reported. The speed at which the 102-story tower was built — in just 410 days — surpassed that of the Chrysler Building and 40 Wall Street, two projects that were being constructed at the time. “One may well believe … the powers of Aladdin’s genii were harnessed” for the project, Richmond Harold Shreve, the co-founder of the architectural firm that designed the building, told the New York Times. Altogether, the construction used 3,000 daily laborers. Including land, the project cost $41 million. The building held onto its title of the world’s tallest skyscraper for nearly 40 years, from its completion in early 1931 until the topping out of the original World Trade Center’s North Tower in late 1970. In 2010, the Empire State Building underwent a $550 million renovation, with $120 million spent to transform the building into a more energy-efficient structure. Today, it is the second-tallest building in New York City, after One World Trade Center.

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Firefighters swarm the World Trade Center in response to the terrorist bombing in 1993.

1993: World Trade Center reopens after terrorist bombing

Some 10,000 workers returned to work at the World Trade Center 23 years ago this month, just one month after a truck bomb ripped through the basement of the office towers. The terrorist attack on Feb. 26 — the first against the World Trade Center — was intended to topple the 1970s-era towers and kill thousands. But in the end, the explosion, which created a hole 200 feet by 100 feet and several stories deep, left six dead. An early estimate had put the damage of the World Trade Center at $1.1 billion, but this was quickly revised to $500 million, and employees were allowed to return to work earlier than expected. Tower Two reopened first, on March 26th, while Tower One reopened on April 1st. “People keep asking me what it was like,” Fran Collard, an American Airlines ticket agent who worked at Tower One and was hospitalized briefly after the Feb. 26 blast, told the New York Times. “I find myself saying that it was like being in a movie, but I’d never want to go through that again.” In September 2001, the twin towers and 7 World Trade Center collapsed during a second terrorist attack in which two planes were flown into the towers. More than 2,600 people died as a result.