Central Park West is lined with incredible apartment buildings with Art Deco touches. One of the loveliest and most renowned is the Majestic, the 29-story, circa-1931 residence at 72nd Street.
But before that Majestic blew New Yorkers away with its style, another Majestic occupied the site: the equally as sumptuous Hotel Majestic.
Built in 1894 when Central Park West was still a low-rise thoroughfare dominated by the Dakota up the block, the Hotel Majestic “had private bowling alleys, a grand lobby, horse-drawn carriages out front, and a rooftop garden,” writes Kevin C. Fitzpatrick in A Journey Into Dorothy Parker’s New York.
Parker lived there with her widowed father as a teenager—along with Gustav Mahler, Edna Ferber, and other celebs of the Gilded Age.
Luxury goes in and out of style, and by the 1920s, the first Hotel Majestic just wasn’t cutting it.
Ephemeral New York 