Stay & Play
Communing with the Past at Manhattan’s Algonquin Hotel
by Randy Mink
With a resident cat named Hamlet in a supporting role, a legacy of arts and literature takes center stage at the 181-room Algonquin Hotel Times Square, Autograph Collection. It’s just a hop, skip and jump from Broadway theaters.
A literary landmark that has welcomed authors, poets, illustrators, playwrights, actors and other storytellers over the past century, the oldest operating hotel in New York City (est. 1902) is synonymous with The Algonquin Round Table, a lunchtime gathering of literary luminaries that took place daily throughout the 1920s. People like Robert Benchley, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber met around a 15-seat round table to gossip, trade barbs and talk about current projects.
Recently, the original table—after years of sitting in a back room—was restored and today hosts modern-day thinkers and trendsetters at programs held in the lobby’s Blue Bar Restaurant and Lounge. A linear room distinguished by Corinthian columns and high corniced ceilings, the Blue Bar extends from the street entrance to a seating area with bookshelves and a grand piano. The back bar glows from a bank of blue track lights, and the room’s grandfather clock lends a nostalgic note.
Guests relaxing in this lobby space may meet up with Hamlet, the Algonquin’s ginger-colored feline ambassador who roams about when not napping in his perch by the front window or hanging out in offices behind reception. The hotel has had an in-house cat since the 1920s. Over the years there have been eight Hamlets and three Matildas (the name for females). Hamlet VIII began his residency in September 2017.
Wandering around one night on the second floor, just outside the fitness room, I discovered a display of vintage photographs of Round Table members and recent articles about the Algonquin. Poking around on various floors, I found guest room doors bearing quotable witticisms from New York wordsmiths. On the door of the Promises, Promises Suite, the quote from playwright Neil Simon reads, “If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.”
