Measuring 50 by 85 feet (15 m × 26 m), the Banquet Hall was decorated in the Rococo style of Louis XV and featured a high-groined arch ceiling in ivory white and old gold, supported by grouped caryatids. The Large Ballroom (or Banquet Hall), on the ninth floor, opened on Septemwith a dinner that was part of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration.
The Astor set the pattern for "a new species of popular hotels that soon clustered around Times Square, vast amusement palaces that catered to crowds with scenographic interiors that mirrored the theatricality of the Great White Way." Amenities Hotel Astor's success triggered the construction of the nearby Knickerbocker Hotel by other members of the Astor family two years later, although that property became commercial office space within a few years. The Theater District would soon occupy magnificent new auditoriums along Forty-second Street, and electric lighting transformed this strip of Broadway into the "Great White Way". to build a subway station there and rename it Times Square. Ochs moved his newspaper's operations to a new tower on 42nd Street in the middle of Longacre Square (later One Times Square). In 1904, New York Times publisher Adolph S. The Astor was an important element in the growth of Times Square and its character as an entertainment center. Its eleven stories contained 1000 guest rooms, with two more levels underground for its extensive "backstage" functions, such as the wine cellar. Architects Clinton & Russell had designed a number of Astor commissions here they developed a very Parisian Beaux-Arts style completed with green-copper mansard roof. Upon completion, the structure occupied an entire city block at a reported total cost of $7 million. The 35,000 square feet (3,300 m 2) Hotel Astor was built in two stages, in 19–1910, by the same architects in the same style.
Times Square map in 1916 with Hotel Astor and nearby theaters The building was razed in 1967 to make way for the high-rise office tower One Astor Plaza. Hotel Astor's success triggered the construction of the nearby Knickerbocker Hotel by other members of the Astor family two years later. The hotel was developed as a successor to the Waldorf-Astoria. It contained 1,000 guest rooms, with two more levels underground for its extensive "backstage" functions, such as the wine cellar. Architects Clinton & Russell designed the hotel as a 11-story Beaux-Arts edifice with a mansard roof. Built in 1905 and expanded in 1909–1910 for the Astor family, the hotel occupied a site bounded by Broadway, Shubert Alley, and 44th and 45th Streets. Hotel Astor was a hotel on Times Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. For other hotels with similar names, see Astor Hotel (disambiguation).