The 1905 hotel named for a Gilded Age beauty

When it opened in 1905 at 7 East 27th Street, it was the Hotel Broztell: an elegant, 250-room Beaux Arts hotel with an entrance flanked by globe-like lamps and decorative touches on the limestone facade.

After a renovation in 2014 (at right), the hotel was rechristened the Evelyn.

The new name pays homage to Evelyn Nesbit, one of the most famous beauties of the Gilded Age.

Nesbit was a model and actress whose rise and fall in the city centered right here in this Madison Square Park neighborhood.

Born near Pittsburgh in 1884, her father’s death left Nesbit’s family penniless. After many stops and starts she, her younger brother, and her mother moved to Manhattan in 1901, taking rooms on East 22nd Street.

The teenager’s beauty caught the eye of artists and photographers. Soon Nesbit was a much sought-after model and chorus girl in the Broadway musical hit Florodora.

She also caught the eye of architect Stanford White. “Stanny,” as he was called, was famous for the buildings he designed, many of which were in the East 20s.

The middle-aged White was also famous for his interest in pretty young showgirls.

He was introduced to Nesbit by another chorus girl, who brought her to the apartment he kept at 22 West 24th Street.

Of the apartment, Nesbit later described being ushered into “the most gorgeous room I have ever seen….It was hung around with velvet; divans and great billowing cushions were everywhere, tiny little Oriental tables, all the impedimenta of luxury, were displayed on either hand.”

Soon Nesbit was visiting White here on her own. At first, their relationship was more paternal, she later wrote. But after White encouraged her mother to leave town one weekend, he invited Nesbit over and subsequently drugged and raped her, she later alleged.

The Evelyn hotel is also just down the street from where Madison Square Garden once stood. Designed by White, this second incarnation of the Garden had a breezy rooftop that was popular with the city’s movers and shakers.

It was here on the roof garden one warm night in June 1906 where Nesbit’s mentally ill and extremely jealous husband, Harry Thaw, approached White from behind and shot him dead.

The ensuing courtroom drama was considered the first “trial of the century” by city newspapers. (Thaw was ultimately found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.)

Little inside the Hotel Evelyn remains from the Gilded Age. The facade is preserved, and a hotel employee told me the original marble floor remains. (At left, the hotel in 1910 next to the once equally elegant Prince George Hotel.)

But how many guests know of the hotel’s namesake and that the events surrounding her fame and then scandal happened within five years right here in today’s Flatiron neighborhood?

(Second Photo: MCNY, 1906; 93.1.1.6019; fifth photo: New-York Historical Society)

The pretty showgirl at the center of a murder

Evelyn Nesbit’s ascent to famous model and glamorous chorus girl in the early 1900s follows the usual narrative.

Born poor in Pennsylvania in 1884, Evelyn was an attractive child who helped her family score extra money by working as an artist’s model.

By the time the Nesbits moved to New York City in 1901, she was an astoundingly beautiful 15-year-old who quickly found gigs posing for famous artists—including illustrator Charles Dana Gibson, who used her as one of his “Gibson Girls.”

She also raked in a then-high $10 a day as a fashion model in newspaper ads, and she earned a place in the hit musical Floradora.

Through her showgirl connections, she was introduced to architect Stanford White in 1901. White, a womanizer then in his late 40s, was smitten.

One night, according to Evelyn, he showered her with attention, brought her to his apartment on West 24th Street, plied her with alcohol, and took her virginity after she’d passed out.

Though White remained in her life, Evelyn dated John Barrymore, then married Harry Thaw, the playboy son of a coal baron. She confided in Thaw about being “seduced” by White.

Thaw was obsessed with avenging his wife’s honor. On a June night in 1906, while the three were at the same theater performance at the White-designed Madison Square Garden, Thaw shot White in the head.

The slaying of the nation’s foremost architect and the scandal that surrounded it captivated the city. After his first murder trial ended in a hung jury, Thaw pleaded temporary insanity and was sent to a mental institution.

What happened to Evelyn? She testified on Thaw’s behalf, then divorced him in 1916. She tried her hand at vaudeville and in silent movies and wrote a few memoirs.

After slipping out of the limelight, she got married and divorced, taught ceramics, and survived suicide attempts and alcoholism.

She died in a nursing home in California in 1967 at the age of 82. “Stanny White was killed but my fate was worse. I lived,” she reportedly said.

Top: Evelyn at the height of her beauty, by Rudolph Eickemeyer; bottom: Evelyn in 1955 on the set of The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, a film based on her life starring Joan Collins.

Madison Square Garden on the move

Ever wonder why it’s called Madison Square Garden—when it’s not near Madison Square? 

The current Garden, on 33rd Street, is the fourth incarnation of New York’s premier sports and entertainment arena.

The first, at right, opened in 1879. Occupying an old railroad depot at Madison Avenue and 26th Street, it became a successful, 10,000-seat venue that featured boxing, bike racing, and ice hockey.

A decade later it was torn down. Famed architect Stanford White designed the second MSG in 1890, below left. This beautiful, 8,000-seat Moorish structure sported cupolas, arches, and a 32-story tower that made it the second tallest building in the city. 

 Madison Square Garden II’s rooftop restaurant became a chic place for New York’s Gilded Age elite to socialize. It’s also where White was murdered in 1906.

He was shot point-blank by Harry Thaw, the jealous husband of a teenage showgirl the 40-ish White had been having an affair with.

By 1925, White’s palace met the wrecking ball, and the third MSG was completed at 50th Street and Eighth Avenue. This arena was home to the Rangers, Knicks, and lots of boxing matches.

Outdated by the late sixties, it was replaced in 1968 by the fourth and current Garden, built on the hallowed grounds of the original Penn Station.