This is the Carlton Hotel at 88 Madison Avenue at 29th Street. I had no plans to photograph this building, had never seen it before, and knew nothing about it. But walking by it at night, I found the lighting on this Beaux-Arts building quite spectacular.
My research, both on and offline returned very little, so I really had to dig. I learned the most from the recent press – click here for the hotel’s website with these articles. Built as the Seville Hotel in 1904, it was in steady decline until it recently underwent a 5-year, $60 million renovation led by starchitect David Rockwell.
One of the high points of the renovation was the discovery of a stained glass skylight dome (believed to have Tiffany glass) hidden above a dropped ceiling above an old barroom and severely blackened. This dome was restored and installed over the new restaurant Country, with chef Geoffrey Zakarian – a lot of positive buzz on this place. A new 3-story annex serves as entrance (click here for photo), with a limestone balcony, a turn-of-the-century curved staircase, and a waterfall. One of these days, I need to get in there and see that dome…
