Talk:The Ansonia

Firsts

I thought the St. Regis was the first air conditioned hotel in ny, and the world, see cityreview.com -midtown- fifth avenue- st. regis

Mistake re Ansonia & Michael Graves

Article says Graves designed Ansonia, though he was not yet born at the time

This is a different Michael Graves. (Maybe related?) -- Petri Krohn 05:30, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

we need a better photo

You can barely see the building in the shot provided. Uucp 18:07, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Cockroach/Neglect Saga

"In October 2007, two residents of the Ansonia filed a lawsuit against the manager and owner of the Ansonia claiming that a portion of the fourteenth floor was infested with cockroaches."

I talked with this guy who owns some buildings near the Asonia...he said that the inside of the place, it's plumbing and etc., are all run down and old. This cockraoch story is no suprise. But other than that, the exterior of the building is an artistic marvel. Oysters on the Half Shell 16:17, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)

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Single White Female

This film is set on this building, should be added to the popular culture section. 143.178.178.54 (talk) 22:41, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Completely coincidentally, I was rewriting this entire article, and it seems I have already added a source for Single White Female having been set here. – Epicgenius (talk) 22:48, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cielquiparle (talk) 11:01, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

The Ansonia

• ... that originally, residents of New York City's Ansonia Hotel received fresh eggs from a farm on its roof? Source: Pollak, Michael (December 31, 2006). "Semis in the City". The New York Times.
  • ALT1: ... that the roof of New York City's Ansonia Hotel originally housed bears, chickens, ducks, goats, and hogs? Source: Pollak, Michael (December 31, 2006). "Semis in the City". The New York Times.
  • ALT2: ... that in the late 20th century, the Ansonia was described as "one of the most litigious buildings" in New York City? Source: Kennedy, Randy (September 11, 1994). "Neighborhood Report: Upper West Side; See You in Court -- or at the Ansonia". The New York Times.
  • ALT3: ... that after a lawyer representing the Ansonia Hotel's owner testified that the building lacked "any particular historic significance", it became a New York City landmark? Source: Gelman, David (April 3, 1972). "The Right to Demolish". Newsday. pp. 6, 10.
  • ALT4: ... that the Ansonia in New York City, once called "The Palace for the Muses", later housed a gay bathhouse and then a sex club? Source: Gaines, Steven (2005). The Sky's the Limit Passion and Property in Manhattan. New York: Little Brown & Company. pp. 183, 193, 196–197.
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Winchester United Church

5x expanded by Epicgenius (talk). Self-nominated at 13:54, 17 March 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/The Ansonia; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: - Not done
Overall: @Epicgenius: Good article. Waiting on a QPQ. Onegreatjoke (talk) 18:42, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

@Onegreatjoke: Thanks for the review, and sorry to keep you waiting. I've done the QPQ now. Epicgenius (talk) 14:06, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Approve. Onegreatjoke (talk) 20:21, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This review is transcluded from Talk:The Ansonia/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Premeditated Chaos (talk · contribs) 22:26, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Sure let's do it. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:26, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Lead & Site

• GAN for Plato's Retreat and Continental baths could get you a neat little 3-article GT :P
• minor tweak from "built a residential hotel" to "built the hotel" - "a hotel" makes it sound like some other hotel
• No prose complaints for the lead otherwise, it's a nice concise summary
• There are a couple of duplicated links in the body but they're so far apart that it makes sense to retain them as-is
• I tweaked it to "notable structures" because otherwise it seemed kind of obvious that a building in a city will be near other structures
• Nothing else to say
  • All sounds good to me. Epicgenius (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Architecture

• This section has a lot of "contain" and "contained" :P
  • Oops I've fixed these. Epicgenius (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
• It's a shame the source doesn't say what Duboy got demoted for. Poor guy had a nervous breakdown over it
• I'm cracking up at the quote from Stokes Jr. "yeah idk why 17 they got bored ig"
  • Lol Epicgenius (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
• "The Ansonia is cited as measuring" - do we need "cited as"? Is it in dispute?
  • The measurements aren't really in dispute, but it's a trapezoidal site; the 74th Street side is 185 feet wide, while the 73rd Street side is 249 feet wide. The depth between the two streets would be 200 feet, but neither side is actually exactly 200 feet wide. Epicgenius (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
• "When the Ansonia was being built, it was characterized as having a facade of..." did it change at some point? (I may wind up finding out later I guess)
  • These materials still comprise the facade today, so I've gone and changed it. I wanted to avoid citing facts from 120 years ago and presenting them as though these were present-day statistics, but the facade actually has not changed that much (aside from losing its cornice in the 1940s). Epicgenius (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
• Pretty minimal commentary through Form and facade
• "When the Ansonia opened in the 1900s, it was cited as" - same question as above
  • I'm a little unsure about this one, as the sources for this statement are from 2014 and 2019, not a hundred and twenty years old. I've changed to "When the Ansonia opened in the 1900s, it covered 550,000 sq ft (51,000 m2)". Epicgenius (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
• I combined two sentences about the Stokes elevator thing
  • That's fine with me. Epicgenius (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
• At the very least I guess if we have to keep saying "was cited as" can we vary the wording a bit lol
  • I've changed it up a bit. Epicgenius (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
• "The space was accessed by a mirrored staircase, a 60-person Jacuzzi" - I don't think access was through the Jacuzzi or the orgy room so I've adjusted it
  • Also fine with me. Epicgenius (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
• "The New York City Department of Health raided the roof farm..." I don't understand what difference it would make if his son owned the animals. Can you clarify?
  • W. E. D. Stokes was accused of running an illegal farm. When he was raided, he claimed that the animals were his son's pets, thus making it not an illegal farm. This didn't quite work, though. Epicgenius (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
    • I revised the text a bit so it says this. Having done so, I wonder if the few sentences about the raid might be better off in the history section?
• I am being picky but does "Each apartment's ceiling measured 12 ft (3.7 m)[16] or 14 ft (4.3 m) tall." mean that some apartments have 12 ft ceilings and others 14 ft; that individual apartments could have both 12 and 14 ft ceilings depending on the room; or that estimates of ceiling height ranged from 12 to 14 ft depending on the source?
  • I think it's both that different apartments had ceilings of different heights, as well as the fact that the sources disagreed (likely because they were measuring different parts of the apartment). The arrangement of the apartments has been changed over the years, so it's also likely that these different ceiling heights are part of the same apartment, but there are many different apartment layouts so it's hard to say for sure. Epicgenius (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
• "easily be combined into a larger apartment" - this may just be lack of sleep but how was this accomplished? They weren't knocking out walls willy-nilly?
  • They were built with several doorways connecting with each other. Epicgenius (talk) 14:23, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
    • Man am I dense when I'm tired

History

• It feels weird to have a little two-line background blurb about social perception of apartments in the city. I'm not sure it's necessary to understand the article. (Although not going to die on the hill of it)
• Poor Duboy! Stokes really keeps screwing this guy over
• "Federal and city officials thwarted a 1916 plot..." were these guys anarchists or what? Some context in the article might be good.
• "At the time, Stokes's wife Helen sought to divorce him..." wait didn't he give the hotel title to his son in 1911? Was he even profiting from it by this point?
• Same question goes for baby Stokes inheriting on WEB's death (and did it really drop $2 mill in value since the 1926 estimate?)
• "The Onward Construction Corporation agreed in August 1945 to sell the building" - wait, didn't the family still own it? Did OCC sell the lease or the actual ownership?
• Does "certificate of occupancy" need to be repeated twice in the same sentence, or could it be "before he could obtain one" (or similar)
• "Starr refused to rectify" did he get the certificate or did they just let him carry on without one
• God have mercy do I love the weird people this place attracted. Hookers, opera singers, gangsters, mediums. <3 <3 <3
• I made some minor tweaks to the prose here and there, but generally speaking this entire section was pretty solid as-is.

The rest

• All the rest of the prose looks good to me. From an aesthetic perspective, I wish the Notable tenants section was last because then the list would be last and not have prose following it, but c'est la vie my aesthetic desires aren't policy yet.
• No CV/close para
• Sourcing is reliable of course and spot checks checked out - nothing off-base or unexpected
• Images are free and appropriately-licensed AFAICT, and are used judiciously

Treat the other comments as suggestions or things to think about; we're good to go here. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:03, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.