Imagine if you will, how Harlem must have looked in the early 1900s. Except for a few buildings like the Koch & Company store between Sixth and Seventh Avenues (the building still stands), churches and banks, much of 125th Street west of Fifth Avenue was populated by row houses and tenement buildings with stores at street level.
On the southwest corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue was the Winthrop Hotel, a six story building that took up Seventh Avenue between 124th and 125th Streets. Beyond that, several large tracks of land lay undeveloped.
The Winthrop was one of a few prominent buildings in Harlem but in 1912, the owner, Gustavus Sidenberg, demolished it and commissioned a new building, the Hotel Theresa, named in honor of his late wife.
Designed by the architectural firm of George & Edward Blum, the Hotel Theresa was Harlem’s ‘first great hotel.’ It stands 13 stories and was the tallest building in Harlem at the time. The Theresa had 300 rooms and was planned as an apartment hotel for long-term guests. Suites had one to three rooms and ensuite baths. One hundred of the rooms were reserved for short-term guests.
The entrance to the hotel, on Seventh Avenue, led to a thirty by thirty-five foot lobby area with a marble staircase leading to the main lobby on the second floor, a waiting room, ladies’ parlor and smoking room. Several stores, including a barbershop, a tailor and a delicatessen occupied the ground floor.
Located on the top floor of the hotel, the dining room offered diners magnificent views of Harlem, the New Jersey Palisades and Long Island Sound. Residents and guests could have their meals delivered to their suites or take them in the dining room, which seated 272.
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