Eugene O'Neill lived there. So have Columbia students.
And anyone who has strolled around the Upper West Side has undoubtedly noticed the large pink beaux-arts building known since 1903 as the Lucerne Hotel.
The hotel now stands on the corner of 79th and Amsterdam, but when it was first built by Harry B. Mulliken, a Columbia alumnus, it was surrounded by farmland. An advertisement in The New York Times from 1903 marks the opening of the hotel with a warning: "Good references required."
Since then, the hotel has served as a dormitory for various universities, including Columbia and Fordham. It also catered to the backpacking and hostelling crowd until 1996, when the Empire Hotel Group acquired the property and converted it back into a luxury hotel.
The Lucerne's affiliation with Columbia continues today. Owned by Simon Oren, who also owns the popular Morningside restaurant Le Monde, the hotel provides special rates and offers for Columbia students and families. It is especially busy during parent's weekend, graduation, and the spring visiting season for prospective students. Columbia also holds a number of events and conferences at the Lucerne, keeping the hotel's conference facilities busy.
The Lucerne hotel also retains its distinctive 1903 façade. The old terra cotta used to create the building's numerous details and decorative motifs lends the edifice a bright salmon-pink tint. The owners and managers of the Lucerne have carefully maintained this striking ornamentation: it was renovated last year with a layer of preservative lime and the cornice was carefully restored, maintaining its original structure.
Despite the hotel's famous aesthetics--it has appeared in numerous commercials and on the television show ER--what struck me most about the hotel was the kindness of everyone there. Having lived in New York for some time, I figured manners were obsolete. I am not used to having doors opened for me, having elevator buttons pressed for me or being greeted warmly and genuinely without a trace of condescension.
Indeed, the Lucerne is more than just a site of important social and architectural history and an important ally for Columbia. It is also an oasis of kindness, cleanliness, and manners in a city that can often seem anything but hospitable.