Hotel Diplomat

Overview

A twelve-story Renaissance Revival former Elks Lodge that became, across six decades as a deteriorating midtown hotel, one of New York's most promiscuously useful spaces: drag balls and glitter events, Le Jardin (the city's first openly commercial gay discotheque, 1973–1976), proto-punk and early rock shows, and (documented on primary flyers in Cornell's hip-hop archive) a Manhattan beachhead for Grandmaster Flash and the early Bronx scene from roughly 1977 into the early 1980s.

The building at 108–116 West 43rd Street was purpose-built in 1911 as the New York Lodge No. 1 of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (the so-called 'Mother Lodge') designed by James Riley Gordon in the Renaissance Revival style at a cost of $1.25 million. Its Lodge Room (third floor, 87 × 93 feet, 32-foot ceilings, two tiers of 28 boxes each) was among the grandest assembly halls in midtown Manhattan; the building also contained a rooftop garden, two basement levels, bowling alleys, and a grill. After the Elks could no longer sustain the property, it was sold for $600,000 at foreclosure on April 12, 1934 and reopened as a hotel under successive names (Hotel Delano, Center Hotel, Hotel Central) before settling as the Hotel Diplomat. By the mid-20th century it was already trending downward, hosting an eclectic mix of jazz greats (Miles Davis, Albert Ayler), salsa bands, labor union conventions, civil rights poetry readings, Libertarian conferences, and, as sources consistently note, drag balls: documentary evidence puts glitter and costume events at the venue by the early 1970s, including the 'First International Costume Glitter Ball' on December 30, 1972, at Le Jardin, and a 'Satan's Celebration: A Rock and Occult Festival' that Halloween. The Diplomat's most culturally consequential tenancy opened in 1973: John Addison's Le Jardin discotheque (see separate record), which occupied the basement and is separately documented. But the Diplomat's own Grand Ballroom and Crystal Ballroom (1,800 seats) ran their own parallel program. The proto-punk and glam scenes used it: the New York Dolls played the Palm Room on May 29, 1972 (organized with the Warhol circle, with Jackie Curtis on the support slot); KISS filled the Crystal Ballroom on July 13 and August 10, 1973; Television played early dates there in April 1974; The Police ran a multi-night stand in September 1979. Gene Simmons, with characteristic bluntness, called the Diplomat 'a hotel for hookers and junkies.' That seediness (and the cheap rental rates that came with it) made it exactly the kind of room where downtown scenes crossed Bronx ones. By the late 1970s the Grand Ballroom was being hired for early hip-hop events, crossing the city's borough borders in the same way the music itself did. Kurtis Blow, in the liner notes to Rhino's *Kurtis Blow Presents the History of Rap*, wrote of watching Grandmaster Flash DJ at the Hotel Diplomat around 1977, noting the spotlight glinting off Flash's rings as he cut beats. Primary flyers preserved in Cornell University Library's Troy L. Smith Collection of Hip Hop Party and Show Tapes confirm documented events: a hip-hop party at the Grand Ballroom on August 19, 1978, and a Christmas night event on December 24, 1979, featuring Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five with Kidd Creole, Rahiem, Melle Mel, Keith Cowboy, and Mr. Ness (Scorpio); the Troy L. Smith tapes also include an Easter Sunday 1981 recording featuring DJ Hollywood, Lovebug Starski, DJ Smalls, Sweet Gee, and June Bug. The flyers are primary evidence of Manhattan functioning as a hip-hop venue alongside the Bronx. The Durst Organization acquired the building in 1969 but did not take operational control until approximately 1985, by which time it had become a single-room-occupancy hotel housing roughly 100 permanent residents (generally elderly and poor) and 50–60 transients. A Gay bar with a primarily Black clientele, Nickel Bar (formerly of 27 West 72nd Street), relocated into the hotel around 1986 under the name Midtown 43 Club before moving again to 127 West 43rd. The buyout process cleared tenants through the late 1980s; demolition approval was reported by David Dunlap in the New York Times on November 7, 1993, and the building was razed in 1994. The site is now occupied by the 55-story Bank of America Tower (1 Bryant Park).

Oral histories & archival media

Archive plates

Plates fill in as scans clear rights

Sonic profile

Cultural role

DJs, promoters & people

Follow a name to see other rooms they connect to

Parties & residencies

Tags

Related rooms