Hampshire House


Hampshire House is an apartment building and hotel located at 150 Central Park South in Manhattan, New York City, on the southern edge of Central Park between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. It contains 155 apartments on 36 floors.

History

The site of Hampshire House was originally the site of an eight-building housing cooperative complex called Navarro Flats, which was built from 1882 to 1884. At the time, Central Park South contained a multitude of high-class apartment buildings. However, Navarro Flats was not successful, and it closed by the 1920s.
Hampshire House was first planned at the site in 1926, and was built as two parts. The first portion was a 13-story building at 145 West 58th Street with of frontage, which opened in 1929. The second part, consisting of a taller portion with of frontage on Central Park South, was delayed due to the Great Depression in the United States. The Central Park South building was envisioned as a narrow tower with a dome, but the plans were changed to a 36-story apartment hotel in the Regency and Art Deco styles. Construction of the $6 million Hampshire House was delayed until January 1931. The structure was done by July 1931. but the building's developers ran out of money and the interior design and roof was not completed. New York Title and Mortgage, who had lent $2.2 million to the developers, started to foreclose on the property but went into receivership itself, and its receivers spent $1.5 million to complete the Hampshire House. The building opened in fall 1937 as a rental building.