I haven't stayed overnight in NYC in a coon's age (and a very old coon at that). I wonder what happened to the old Astor Hotel. What is it now? Thanks for your help.

My mind is drawing a complete blank, where is/was it located?

Sorry, I thought the Astor was pretty well known, but perhaps only to an older crowd. It was located right off Times Square and was a lovely old hotel.

Wayne, it is a sort of landmark building but my mind is completely void of how I know this building.

It wasn't one of the ones destroyed to build the Marriott was it?

I just don't know anything at all about the hotel. Isn't there anyone who knows what happened to it?

I've been wracking my brain trying to remember its exact location. I'm checking with my experts. All I know for sure is that it was on the Broadway (west) side of Time Square.
I remember my one and only New Year's Eve on Times Square. at around 10:30-111, my fraternity brothers and I went into the Astor Bar for drink, returning the the steps outside the Astor at around 11:45 to welcome in the New Year.

Broadway between 44th and 45th, according to a website I found. Looks like it was torn down in the late 60s to make way for an office tower....

Yep.... Look here:

http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GON/GON023.htm

rjw is correct. It's now 1515 Broadway, a block south of the Marriott Marquis.

My 1953 high school graduation prom was held at the Astor Hotel on the roof. Nothing so romantic than dancing under the stars with your high school sweetheat. AH, dancing was never as great as that night!
M

Thanks a lot for digging up the history of the place. I stayed there several times in the 50's because it was so convenient to Times Square.

Omigosh---anybody remember the old song done by Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong entitled "What a Swell Party This Is"??

I just recalled that great line in the song ---
"Do you know, Mimsi Starr,
She got pinched in the Astor Bar."

What a memory ..........

Sorry, Wayne, but your memory is only partly accurate. It was Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. The movie was High Society, a musical version of The Philadelphia Story.

PS: The words from the song are correct.
In the movie, Crosby and Armstrong did a duet of another song called something like "Now You Has Jazz."

Minette, what a spectacular memory.

Let's see -- memories of a senior prom beneath the crepe paper streamers in our Ohio high school gym -- or dancing under the stars atop the Astor. Yep -- you definitely win!

And what about that old song " And she thought that she had lost it at the Astor" !

HowardR, the duet I am thinking of was definitely done by Crosby and Armstrong. Yes, there have been other versions of it such as you indicated.

Maybe so, Wayne, but not in that movie!
So what! Life is too short to nitpick!