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City Makes It Official: Algonquin Is Landmark

City Makes It Official: Algonquin Is Landmark
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September 20, 1987, Section 1, Page 58Buy Reprints
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The Algonquin Hotel, where literary figures of the 1920's held court at the Round Table, attained landmark status last week along with an apartment house overlooking Central Park.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously to designate the Algonquin, at 59 West 44th Street, and the Beresford apartments, at 211 Central Park West, at 81st Street, as landmarks.

The Algonquin owes its new status more to its history as the watering hole for writers and actors than to its architecture. Designed by Goldwyn Starret, it has a red brick Renaissance facade with three vertical rows of black, cast-iron windows. Four Landmarks on Block

''The Algonquin Hotel played a significant role in the literary history of the city,'' noted Gene A. Norman, the Landmarks Commission's chairman. ''It graces 44th Street.'' ''It's such an honor,'' said Andrew Noble, the hotel's new general manager. ''We're in excellent company.''

The hotel is the fourth landmark on its block, the others being the New York Yacht Club, the Bar Association of the City of New York and the Harvard Club.

The hotel is owned by Caesar Park Hotels, a subsidiary of Aoki Corporation of Tokyo, which bought it in June. Since it opened in 1902, the 200-room hotel has had two other owners.

One, Frank Case, catered to writers and editors from the nearby New Yorker and other publications, enabling them to form the celebrated Round Table, which met there weekly. Among its regulars were Robert Benchley, Harold Ross and Dorothy Parker. Creaky Old Elevators

The second owner, Ben Bodne, bought the hotel in 1946. He once said that he would sell it the day the hotel needed self-service elevators.

He need not have worried. The same two creaky old elevators still work, although Harry Celentano, who ran one 40 years ago has graduated to the newsstand. In between, he was a bellhop for the likes of Harpo Marx.

''I checked Harpo in,'' Mr. Celentano recalled. ''He had his harp in a big crate, and we had a tough time getting it into the elevator.''

As for Dorothy Parker, ''It's a strong rumor,'' Mr. Celentano said, that her ashes will be returned to the hotel.

Guests would complain when Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe kept them up composing songs for their new musical, ''My Fair Lady.'' ''And Charles Laughton used to rehearse upstairs,'' Mr. Celentano said. Host of Celebrities

In more recent years, the hotel continued to percolate with writers, actors and even politicians, when John V. Lindsay, then a Representative, had an office across the street.

The other new landmark, the Beresford, is also home to a host of celebrities - Isaac Stern, John McEnroe, Peter Jennings, Helen Gurley Brown are but a handful.

With its army of liveried doormen, the building remains a symbol of pre-Depression affluence. Its three-tower roofline marks the corner facing the American Museum of Natural History and is a focal point in the Central Park West skyline.

''The image that most of the world has of New York includes the sweep of Central Park West,'' Mr. Norman said, ''and the distinctive three towers of the Beresford is certainly part of that New York look.'' Rams' Heads and Angels

Completed in 1929 and designed by Emery Roth, the Beresford has two facades, on Central Park West and on 81st Street, of brick with limestone and terra-cotta trim. Winged chariots, rams' heads, dolphins and angels adorn it.

Recently, prices for apartments in the building, a cooperative, have ranged from $1 million to $8 million, according to Morton Glick, management executive at Douglas Elliman Gibbon & Ives, which manages the building. Landmark designation usually enhances residential property values, he said.

Landmark status means that changes to the facade may not be made without approval of the Landmarks Commission, which designated the two buildings Tuesday night. But the Beresford has been enforcing landmark criteria on its own in recent years.

''We don't want windows changed without the board's approval,'' said Alfred L. Schwartz, president of the cooperative board, ''and we've been very strict that they conform to the original windows.''

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section 1, Page 58 of the National edition with the headline: City Makes It Official: Algonquin Is Landmark. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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