The Dark Story Behind Harlem's Most Controversial Estate: Hotel Theresa

Описание: The Dark Story Of Harlem's Most Controversial Estate: Hotel Theresa

The Hotel Theresa was born out of grief and ego.

In 1912, a German-born stockbroker named Gustavus Sidenberg stood on the corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue and looked at Harlem the way a developer looks at empty land. Opportunity. He'd just demolished a smaller building called the Winthrop Hotel that had occupied the site, and he commissioned something grander—something that would cement his name into the neighborhood's skyline forever.

He named it after his late wife. Theresa.

Coincidentally—or perhaps not—his second wife was also named Theresa.

The architects were George and Edward Blum, brothers trained in Paris at the finest architectural school in Europe. They designed a thirteen-story steel-framed hotel with a striking white brick and terra cotta facade. Every single piece of ornamentation on that building—every decorative detail, every carved flourish, every terra cotta gable—was custom-made specifically for this project. Nothing was pre-fabricated stock. Nothing was generic. The Blums wanted the Theresa to look like nothing else in Manhattan.

And it did.

When it opened in 1913, the Hotel Theresa was the tallest building in Harlem. It would hold that title for sixty years, until 1973 when the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building rose across the street. For six decades, if you stood anywhere in Harlem and looked up, the Theresa dominated the skyline like a white fist punching through the clouds.

Now let's talk about what this building was actually worth.

In today's dollars, the Hotel Theresa would be valued at somewhere between $50 million and $100 million. That's not speculation. That's what a thirteen-story, 300-room full-blockfront commercial property on one of the most prominent intersections in Harlem is worth in today's Manhattan real estate market. The original construction cost alone—$1.5 million in 1913—translates to roughly $45 million when adjusted for inflation. But the land? A full blockfront on the corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue? That adds an entirely different layer of value on top.