former Lowes hotel near 53rd & Lexington?

vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:
>
> Metropolitan (Doubletree) 51&Lex, I think. They used to rent out
> the penthouse for meetings for some clubs I belong to. There's also a
> "W" and a Marriott nearby. But 53&Lex is Citicorp, and I don't recall
> anything north of Citi until the Four Seasons. I have a vague
> recollection of seeing the Lowes sign (early 1980s?) on what is now
> the Metropolitan but my memory could be playing tricks on me because
> Lowes was also a movie theatre chain. If you really want to check this
> out, do a reverse geography search on superpages.com.

Lowes is a home improvement chain. The movies and hotels were Loew's.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net

Sancho Panza wrote:

> By the way, the hotel the poster is probably asking about was the Summit,
> architecturally notable for being designed by Lapidus, the big Miami hotel
> architect. As a matter of fact, it was the subject in the last few years of
> a discussion about landmarking the building as an example of its time.

Hm. The closest to the Miami Beach style I've noticed is the Americana,
at 53rd & Seventh or so (it's actually still there -- though it hasn't
been called the Americana in decades).
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net

On Sat, 28 Jan 2006 13:54:07 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:

>vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:
>>
>> Metropolitan (Doubletree) 51&Lex, I think. They used to rent out
>> the penthouse for meetings for some clubs I belong to. There's also a
>> "W" and a Marriott nearby. But 53&Lex is Citicorp, and I don't recall
>> anything north of Citi until the Four Seasons. I have a vague
>> recollection of seeing the Lowes sign (early 1980s?) on what is now
>> the Metropolitan but my memory could be playing tricks on me because
>> Lowes was also a movie theatre chain. If you really want to check this
>> out, do a reverse geography search on superpages.com.
>
>Lowes is a home improvement chain. The movies and hotels were Loew's.

Actually, to put it precisely, it's Loews Corp. (no apostrophe). They
do own the hotels, but have no connection to the cinema chain. Their
real bread and butter comes from owning the CNA insurance giant,
tobacco company Lorillard, oil company Diamond Offshore and the Bulova
watch company.

Cyrus Afzali wrote:
>
> On Sat, 28 Jan 2006 13:54:07 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
> <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> >vjp2.at@at.BioStrategist.dot.dot.com wrote:
> >>
> >> Metropolitan (Doubletree) 51&Lex, I think. They used to rent out
> >> the penthouse for meetings for some clubs I belong to. There's also a
> >> "W" and a Marriott nearby. But 53&Lex is Citicorp, and I don't recall
> >> anything north of Citi until the Four Seasons. I have a vague
> >> recollection of seeing the Lowes sign (early 1980s?) on what is now
> >> the Metropolitan but my memory could be playing tricks on me because
> >> Lowes was also a movie theatre chain. If you really want to check this
> >> out, do a reverse geography search on superpages.com.
> >
> >Lowes is a home improvement chain. The movies and hotels were Loew's.
>
> Actually, to put it precisely, it's Loews Corp. (no apostrophe). They
> do own the hotels, but have no connection to the cinema chain. Their
> real bread and butter comes from owning the CNA insurance giant,
> tobacco company Lorillard, oil company Diamond Offshore and the Bulova
> watch company.

I said _were_. I went to Loew's 175th St. until 1968 (the last movie
shown there was *2001*).
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net

Steven M. O'Neill wrote:
>
> Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >Steven M. O'Neill wrote:
> >> Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >> >I don't expect a Brooklynite to have a mental map of Manhattan ...
> >>
> >> And yet, I should expect a New Jerseyan to?
> >
> >Which I've been for about a year and a half.

And I've been a New Yorker for more than 50 years, including the 25
spent in Chicago (with annual visits).

> Your mental map must be fading rapidly.

I'm in the city -- Midtown -- nearly every week. The East Side and the
West Side are just conceptually not close together.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net

Steven M. O'Neill wrote:
>
> Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >Steven M. O'Neill wrote:
> >> Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >> >Steven M. O'Neill wrote:
> >> >> Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >> >> >I don't expect a Brooklynite to have a mental map of Manhattan ...
> >> >> And yet, I should expect a New Jerseyan to?
> >> >Which I've been for about a year and a half.
> >
> >And I've been a New Yorker for more than 50 years, including the 25
> >spent in Chicago (with annual visits).
>
> I've been a New Yorker for 107 years,

I find that rather hard to believe.

> including 25 spent in
> Delaware and (briefly) other places, 9 months in utero, and 71
> years pre-conception. Before that I was Parisian for 337 years.
> C'est vrai.
>
> >> Your mental map must be fading rapidly.
> >
> >I'm in the city -- Midtown -- nearly every week. The East Side and the
> >West Side are just conceptually not close together.
>
> What if you start 10 inches east of 5th Avenue and travel 10
> inches west of 5th Avenue?

You wouldn't have gone anywhere.

And the neighborhood "Fifth Avenue" is neither East Side nor West Side.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net

Steven M. O'Neill wrote:
>
> Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >Steven M. O'Neill wrote:
> >> I've been a New Yorker for 107 years,
> >
> >I find that rather hard to believe.
>
> If you can be a New Yorker while living in Chicago, why can't I
> be one while I'm waiting to be born?

Because you weren't conscious at the time.

And if you're adopting the Aristotelian doctrine of the Humunculus
inside the mother's body, then your lifetime would go back to Creation.
So that's not a useful metric at all.

> >> including 25 spent in
> >> Delaware and (briefly) other places, 9 months in utero, and 71
> >> years pre-conception. Before that I was Parisian for 337 years.
> >> C'est vrai.
> >>
> >> >> Your mental map must be fading rapidly.
> >> >
> >> >I'm in the city -- Midtown -- nearly every week. The East Side and the
> >> >West Side are just conceptually not close together.
> >>
> >> What if you start 10 inches east of 5th Avenue and travel 10
> >> inches west of 5th Avenue?
> >
> >You wouldn't have gone anywhere.
>
> I certainly will have. I will have gone the width of 5th Avenue
> plus 20 inches.

You're still out on the sidewalk.

> >And the neighborhood "Fifth Avenue" is neither East Side nor West Side.
>
> What are you talking about, man? The East Side and the West
> Side are determined by 5th Avenue.

No, they're neighborhoods. And they're conceptually as well as
geographically distinct.

Compare Los Angeles's "West Side" -- the counterpart is called "East
L.A.," and they don't meet at some dividing line where the house numbers
change.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net

I am looking out my window at it right now. The New York Sun newspaper
last Friday had a nice feature about the building and its architecture.
Apparently its rather unusual design for Manhattan was due to it being
the first hotel built in 30 years in Manhattan, in 1959!