Omni Berkshire Place


The Berkshire Hotel, now known as Omni Berkshire Place, was a hotel in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, operated by Omni Hotels & Resorts. Located at 21 East 52nd Street, near Madison Avenue, it opened in 1926 and was designed by architects Warren & Wetmore in Classical Revival style. It was built as a residential hotel and was part of the "Terminal City" project consisting of hotels and apartment buildings in the area around Grand Central Terminal. It previously had up to 500 suites, but by the time it closed in 2020, it had 395 guestrooms and suites.

Early history

The hotel, designed by architects Warren & Wetmore in Classical Revival style, opened in 1926. At the time of construction, it was 10 stories tall, located on a plot measuring. Two years later, J.C. and M.G. Mayer leased the hotel for 21 years with plans to renovate it.

Connection to the arts

The Berkshire has historic ties to Broadway and the arts. Ethel Merman lived at the property for many years, and Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote the musical Oklahoma! in a suite that was later named the Rodgers and Hammerstein Suite. Alfred Hitchcock was also a regular.
The hotel was for many years the home of an exclusive private dining club founded by drama critic Alexander Woolcott and designed by Norman Bel Geddes. The club was known as the Elbow Room upon its opening in 1938. Its founding members included Harold Ross, George S. Kaufman, Robert E. Sherwood, Moss Hart, William S. Paley, Raymond Massey, and Cedric Hardwicke. Later renamed the Barberry Room, it was known as "the most exclusive restaurant in New York". Rodgers and Hammerstein collaborated at a reserved table, Edward R. Murrow dined there each Friday before the airing of his Person to Person show, and Frank Sinatra dined there in 1955 with heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. Marc Connelly, David Sarnoff, and Richard Rodgers continued to be regulars into the 1950s.
Salvador Dali dined at the Barberry in 1960 and took offense at a William-Adolphe Bouguereau painting in the dining room depicting a satyr surrounded by nymphs. Dali reportedly considered Bouguereau's nymphs to be bad art and struck a deal with the hotel to trade his own painting of nymphs for the Bouguereau. Dali returned to the dining room days later and, as well-heeled diners watched and dodged paint, created an abstract impression of nymphs. He used a rubber cap on his head to apply the paint to a seven-foot canvas. The Barberry Room displayed Dali's nymphs for a time, but it was later relegated to a linen closet. In 1979, the New York Daily News reported that the Dali had disappeared.

Subsequent sales and renovations

The hotel was purchased in 1959 by the Knott Hotels Corporation and renamed the Knott Berkshire Hotel. Knott subsequently announced plans to build a 15-story, 158-room addition to the Berkshire Hotel.
In 1977, the hotel was acquired by the Dunfey Family Hotel Co., a subsidiary of Irish International Airlines, for $9.7 million, becoming the first hotel in New York City to be run by that chain. The new owner evicted Ethel Merman in 1978, stating that it did not want permanent residents. In 1979, the Dunfey group renamed the hotel the "Berkshire Place Hotel". Dunfey renovated the hotel the same year at a cost of $9 million to designs by Peter Gisolfi Associates and interior architect Roland Jutras. The project involved renovating all of the guest rooms. The refurbished hotel opened in June 1979. Its restoration was described by media as part of a "building boom" that followed the city's near-bankruptcy in 1975, as well as part of a general trend of foreign airlines renovating hotels in New York City.
The Dunfey group acquired the Omni hotel chain in 1983. In a 1986 rebranding effort, the hotel was renamed the "Omni Berkshire Place". Omni bought the Berkshire Place hotel outright in March 1992 for $83.5 million. The hotel was further renovated in 1995 and 2003. During the 1995 renovation, which cost $50 million, the Omni Berkshire Place was downsized from 415 to 395 rooms, and numerous amenities were added to each room. After the renovation, the average guest room was and there were 20 handicapped-accessible guest rooms.
In early 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, the hotel was temporarily closed and 268 staff members were fired. On June 11, 2020, Omni announced that the Berkshire Hotel would close permanently, though TRT Holdings, owner of Omni Hotels, would retain the property for the time being.

Critical reception

In 1979, The New York Times called the structure "a handsome unexceptional building erected in 1926 to the designs of Warren & Wetmore, one of New York's finest architectural firms of the eclectic period".