Hotel President, 234 W. 48th St., New York, 1986  

Constructed in 1928 the Hotel President was in business under this name at 234 W. 48th St. from 1928 to 1984. In July 1928 the New York Herald Tribune, 6 July 1928, pg. 34, reported, "Wm. A. White & Sons have negotiated a loan of $800,000 on the recently completed President Hotel , at 234-242 West Forty-eighth Street. The building is fifteen stories in height and contains 387 rooms. The owner is West Forty-eighth Street Construction Company, Inc., Charles H. Darmstadt president."

This is an undated postcard view of the President Hotel.

In 2002 234 W. 48th St. was listed in the Manhattan telephone directory as Best Western President Hotel.

In 2017 tripadvisor listed 234 W. 48th St. as the Gallivant Times Square. A visit to the site in August 2017 showed this to be the case.

The sign was painted on the west-facing wall of the hotel. In 2017 this same wall was without any remaining trace of the sign (click for image).

The architect of the Hotel President was the prolific New York apartment house architect, H. I. Feldman, i. e., Hyman Isaac Feldman (1896-1981). His obituary appeared in the New York Times, 28 January 1981, reading, "H. I. Feldman, an architect who designed 2,500 apartment houses in the New York metropolitan area, died yesterday at his home on Riverside Drive. He was 84 years old. Mr. Feldman established his practice in 1921 and became particularly active on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, where his buildings are examples of the Art Deco style, and in Brooklyn. His career reached its peak in the Manhattan building boom that followed World War II. Mr. Feldman designed numerous apartment-house projects built by developers from the 50's to the 70's, ranging from Greenwich Village and Murray Hill to Yorkville. Hallmarks of his early Manhattan buildings frequently were corners beveled at a 45-degree angle at the setback upper stories. He was the architect of Schwab House, at Riverside Drive and 73d Street, and of 1025 Fifth Avenue, one of the first cooperatives built after World War II. Recent Projects Among his last major projects before he retired in 1978 was the Park Lane Tower - a 36-story, L-shaped apartment house with circular corner terraces, on Third Avenue between 85th and 86th Streets, built in the 60's - and the 34-story apartment building at 430 East 53d Street. One of his nonresidential works was the headquarters of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York at 130 East 59th Street and the headquarters of the United Jewish Appeal at 220 West 58th Street. The Feldman company, which carried his name, also designed public schools, post offices and synagogues. For the New York City Housing Authority, he designed the Tilden Houses in Brooklyn, La Guardia Houses in Lower Manhattan, and the Todt Hill Houses in Staten Island. Hyman Isaac Feldman was born in Chelzetz, Austria, now a part of Poland. He came to New York at the age of 4, and later enrolled at City College, which he left to study landscape architecture at Cornell University on a scholarship. He went on to Yale University, also on a scholarship, but left to join the Army in World War I. After the war he returned to Yale, receiving a degree in architecture in 1919. Endowed Yale Scholarship Mr. Feldman, who endowed the H. I. Feldman Scholarship in architecture at Yale, received honorary architectural degrees from City College and Columbia University. He was a member emeritus of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and a former president of the New York Society of Architects and the New York Council of Architects. He is survived by his wife, the former Renee Belkowsky; two daughters, Madeleine Gutman of Manhattan and Naomi Fatouras of Bloomington, Ind.; a son, Geoffrey Fulton of Manhattan; six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. A funeral service will be held at 2:15 P.M. today at the Riverside Memorial Chapel, at Amsterdam Avenue and 76th Street. Correction: February 12, 1981, Thursday, Late City Final Edition An obituary of H.I. Feldman in The Times on Jan. 27 incorrectly identified the architect of the Schwab House at 73d Street and Riverside Drive. The architect was the late Sylvan Bien."

Copyright © 2017 Walter Grutchfield