In 1980 Donald Trump destroyed this grand hotel for his "Grand" Hyatt Hotel. The Commodore was stripped to it's steel skeleton except the lower two or three floors where the facade was all limestone. Demolition workers jackhammered all of the projecting limestone figural carvings, moldings, window trim and cornices flush with the brick wall, and sheathed over their carcases with gleeming new flat mirror-like material. This page has several views of what WAS, before Donald Trump's polished garbage skyscraper went up..

Warren & Wetmore, architects of the adjacent landmark Grand Central station also designed the Commodore Hotel which was completed in 1919, the hotel had 1,956 guest rooms on 28 floors. The hotel at 42nd Street, Park and Lexington Avenue claimed to have the largest banquet and ballroom in North America. It seated 3,500 and hosted many of the country's most important functions.

Below is a photo of the same South West corner of the hotel from 1918 when it was under construction. The photo shows the hotel's facade brickwork nearly completed, with just one more floor to go and the copper cornice, part of which can be seen stripped off in the above photo.

The foreground is Park Avenue and sometime after this photo an elevated "ramp" of sorts was built to take traffic up over 42nd street and around Grand Central Station between the station and the Commodore in a torturous winding path for Northbound and the same around the other side for South bound. On the North end of the station traffic was routed through a tight double curve in a short tunnel through another building that straddles and faces North on Park Avenue.

Apair of doorknobs from the hotel with the Commodore name and ship logo in my collection;

I also have a number of pieces of silverware with the hotel name and logo.

In Feburary 2009 I found one of the sections of cornice for salefor $2500, and today March 6th took delivery from Steve near Minneapolis who purchased it from a Florida collector 15 years ago. Seems the Florida fellow had two of them and decided to clean and shine up the second one and was totally unhappy with the results- lesson for would-be collectors out there, DO NOT REMOVE a patina from copper, brass etc.

I was 19 when the demolition started and I attempted to acquire one of these cornice sections. Knowing there was a watchman there somewhere to watch the worker's tools and equipment, I climbed up the outside scaffold on the Vanderbilt side one night around 3 A.M. Around the 25th floor the worker's wood plank platform was in the way of further climbing, so I went in through one of the windows, found the stairwell and walked up to the 28th floor and the roof.

There were bare construction site type bulbs lit up there and I had the feeling the watchman was around somewhere, I don't remember if I had sheet metal cutters on me or what, but when I peered over the edge of the roof the copper cornice was just massively HUGE and I knew it would take some time to cut the metal along the top, bottom and 2 sides and make a lot of NOISE in the process.

reluctantly I departed without a piece of the cornice, but now 28 years later one comes up for sale just 4 hours away from me, go figure!

Under construction, 1917-1918

1928 view

28 stories doesn't seem high from the street, but this 1930 photo of dancer Lena Basquette on the roof top ledge of the Commodore shows just how high 28 stories really IS when you look down!

Daily log pages from Feb 4th 1979 detailing trying to get one of these copper cornice sections;

February 4th Sun
At 6:30 fell asleep, at 9:00 woke up [to the sound of the doorbell and pounding on my door, soon as I saw SUN shining I knew what happened!] and opened my door to about 15 cops- they broke door in back, I went to bed at 10:00 got up at 2:00 and went down to fix door [to loading dock] then to bar came back and saw Vance.

Later, at 1:30 AM went to the Commodore Hotel to try to get a copper gargoyle from roof cornice climbed up [scaffold] on N.W corner up to about the 8th floor where there is a large stone cornice - walked towards N.E corner direction ["H" shaped building] climbed up scaffold all the way to top- 27 floors, looked at stonework on 24th or so floor the stone caryatids have [carving] from waist up- nice- tried to get piece from cornice, no luck- lights on upstairs didn't want to make noise. Got home at 3:45 [A.M.]

The side I went up on was the 3rd floor, the roof is the 24th floor on that side but the 27th floor from the sidewalk 17-25 sunny

I had a really bad cold and took some cold and cough medicine to get through my midnight to 8 shift as night watchman, I remember it was cold because the brick and stone Cable building had no heat after about 1 PM on Saturday. So I laid down on my bed in my loft upstairs and somehow with the time of night, the cold, and the medications I drifted off to sleep, oh boy! As I wrote down in the diary page, soon as I was jump start awaked by pounding on the hallway door and my bell ringing, and seeing bright sun shining through my 6 windows I knew what had happened- I fell asleep, someone rang the night bell on the sidewalk to enter or leave and not getting a response called the police who broke the loading dock door and came searching for me thinking something happened.

Looks like I was feeling better that Sunday night for that's when I went to the Commodore to try to remove one of these cornice masks.

On February 3rd, 2009 I bought one of these cornice pieces for $2,300 plus $200 delivery in March and $60 for gas, almost exactly 30 years to the day!]

This view from the top looking down at Grand Central station is similar to the one I saw that night;