The Mansfield Hotel is a residential hotel at 12 West 44th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Designed in the Beaux-Arts style by the architectural firm of Renwick, Aspinwall & Owen, the 12-story building was completed in 1902 as an apartment hotel. The Mansfield was developed by onetime Vermont governor John G. McCullough and lawyer Frederick B. Jennings. The building is a New York City designated landmark.
The brick-and-stone facade is arranged in an "H" shape and is divided vertically into three bays. The first two stories of the Mansfield's facade are clad with rusticated limestone blocks, while the upper stories are clad with red brick; the top two floors are placed within a mansard roof. The hotel contains a large lobby with coffered ceiling, as well as a room with a skylight that formerly served as a library. The Mansfield contained 129 or 131 rooms on its upper stories by the late 1990s; these rooms were converted to co-living spaces in 2021.
McCullough and Jennings filed plans with the New York City Department of Buildings in June 1901, and the hotel opened the next year; the men continued to own the hotel until 1940. The Mansfield became popular among theatrical and artistic personalities, as well as businesspeople, during the early 20th century. The hotel was renovated in 1935, when a nightclub was added next to the lobby, and again in the 1960s. Bernard Goldberg, who acquired the hotel in 1995, renovated it extensively. The Mansfield was then resold to Credit Suisse First Boston in 1998, then to Brad Reiss and John Yoon in 2004. Canadian firm Harrington Housing acquired the Mansfield Hotel in 2021 and renovated the rooms into co-living spaces.
Site
The Mansfield Hotel is at 12 West 44th Street, along the south sidewalk between Sixth Avenue and Fifth Avenue, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The rectangular land lot covers , with a frontage of on 44th Street and a depth of . The structure occupies most of its lot. On the same block, the New York City Bar Association Building, Royalton Hotel, Penn Club of New York Building, and General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen Building are to the west, while the Century Association Clubhouse is to the south. Other nearby buildings include the Algonquin, Iroquois, and Sofitel New York hotels to the northwest; the New York Yacht Club Building and the Harvard Club of New York City building to the north; and the Aeolian Building, Salmon Tower Building, 500 Fifth Avenue, and 510 Fifth Avenue on the block immediately to the south.
The adjacent block of 44th Street is known as Club Row, which contains several clubhouses. When the Mansfield Hotel was developed at the beginning of the 20th century, several other clubhouses were being built in the area. By the early 1900s, these clubs included the Yale Club, New York Yacht Club, Harvard Club, New York City Bar Association, Century Association, and the City Club of New York, all of which remained in the area at the end of the 20th century. Prior to the development of the Mansfield Hotel, the neighborhood contained a slaughterhouse, stables for stagecoach horses, and a train yard for the elevated Sixth Avenue Line. There were historically many stagecoach stables on 43rd and 44th Streets between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, but only a few of the stables remained by the end of the 20th century.
Architecture
The Mansfield Hotel was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by the architectural firm of Renwick, Aspinwall & Owen (founded by James Renwick Jr.). The structure is 12 stories high and is arranged in an "H" with light courts to the west and east.
Facade
The facade is made of brick and stone and is primarily divided vertically into three bays. The first two stories of the Mansfield's facade are clad with rusticated limestone blocks. The main entrance is through a molded round arch at the center of the facade, which is topped by a cartouche with garlands on either side. On either side of the main entrance are large scrolled brackets, which support a projecting balcony on the second floor. The rest of the first story contains windows, above which a crown molding runs horizontally across the facade at the same level as the second-story balcony. At the second story, the central balcony contains a decorative balustrade with plinths; there is an arched niche immediately behind the balcony. The outer bays of the second story contain ornate iron balconies. Above each of the second-story bays are carved urns and swags, which support oriel windows on the third story; a crown molding runs above the rest of the second story.