If these walls could talk… Babe Ruth, Mark Twain, you?
Mark Twain stayed at the Belleclaire. So did home-run champ Babe Ruth. “I never visited a place so kindling to my imagination,” extolled Russian writer Max Gorky on his first US visit while looking out at the Hudson River from his 9th floor Belleclaire suite (New York Times, 1906).
Now my husband and I are on the same 9th floor with a 2013 New York Times spread over luxurious sheets. Our views are up Broadway via one curved window, and across 77th to the Belvedere Castle in Central Park through another. Our luscious round room is part of the Broadway King Suite – King as in the size of the bed, not the kind of ruling royalty that Twain and Gorky criticized together, in favor of freedom for all instead!
Carillon bells from a nearby 19th century church start playing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” and we can hear it over the hum of the room’s air conditioner, one of the modern pleasures that sits not far from a large flat screen TV, a mini-fridge, Dean and Deluca gourmet snacks, free WiFi, and bottled water in our round room. A multi-million dollar renovation includes a gym, media room, and coffee lounge as part of the amenities. A roof-top garden restaurant will be a stellar future addition.
Belleclaire lobby hub for people watching with silver and glass ice tea pitchers one way, wooden check-in counter under a skylight another way , Coffee Bean pastries and drinks to the right, elevators and media center to the left, from the entrance on the Upper West Side.
The Belleclaire is celebrating its 110th anniversary and its legacy and location are its best luxuries. It’s a taste of New York’s history – an Emery Roth-designed beauty – one of the first residential “skyscrapers” in the world, at ten stories high with 18-foot ceilings. The limestone and brick, Art Nouveau and Beaux Arts hybrid is also a comfortable base for today’s Upper West Side life. Guests can stroll out from the cafe lounge and sky-lighted lobby over the original 1903 tiles that Babe Ruth walked on, and head to the neighborhood’s Zabars, Riverside Park, the Anthorp, churches from the 17th to 21st centuries, the Castle in Central Park, the American Museum of Natural History and Hayden Planetarium.
To commemorate the building’s 110th, the hotel is offering two specials for the summer of 2013. One package includes a walk through millions of years of time with super passes for the famed American Museum of Natural History, with the Hayden Planetarium’s spiraling walkway of cosmic time. The other package special is for Yankee fans, with box seats and special stadium tours. The Bronx Bombers were playing out of town during our stay, so we opted for the world class museum for an afternoon of time travel with the cosmos, whales, and food – all special exhibits there now. And then back to our elegant turret in the NYC sky.
The Belleclaire will continue to offer home run specials throughout its anniversary year and to provide many options to combine past and present for indelible New York memories!
-Lisa TE Sonne for Luxury Travel Mavens.com
The Belleclaire today celebrating 110 years!
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