History
The Algonquin Hotel was originally designed as an apartment hotel, whose owner planned to rent rooms and suites on year-long leases. When few leases sold, the owner decided to turn it into a hotel which he was originally going to name "The Puritan." Frank Case, upon discovering that Algonquian tribes had been the first residents of the area, persuaded the owner to christen it "The Algonquin" instead.
Case took over the lease on the hotel in 1907 and bought the property on which the building sat in 1927 for USD $1 million. Case remained owner and manager of the hotel until his death in June 1946. In October that year, the Algonquin was purchased by Ben Bodne of Charleston, South Carolina for just over USD $1 million. Bodne undertook an extensive restoration and renovation effort. Bodne sold the hotel in 1987 to a group of Japanese investors and the Algonquin changed hands a number of times before ending up with Miller Global Properties in 2002. Following a two-year, USD $3 million renovation, the hotel was sold again in 2005 to HEI Hospitality.
HEI has affiliated it with Marriott International where it is part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection brand.
Read more about this topic: Algonquin Hotel
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“In every election in American history both parties have their clichés. The party that has the clichés that ring true wins.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)