There is no shortage of strikingly beautiful, ornately embellished buildings on New York’s Upper West Side. I blogged about one of them, The Apthorp, and the circuitous route some friends and I took to stalk it on Friday. That route included a stop at another gorgeous UWS structure, The Ansonia, easily one of the most breathtaking properties I have ever laid eyes on. Since the site has appeared in countless productions over the years, including the 1992 thriller Single White Female, I figured it was definitely blog-worthy.
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Commissioned in 1899 by millionaire property developer William Earl Dodge Stokes, the building took five years to complete at a cost of $3 million, finally opening to the public on April 19th, 1904. The 17-story Beau Arts-style structure originally served as a luxury residential hotel.
Encompassing 550,000 square feet of space, the ornate limestone building was designed by French architect Paul E. M. Duboy, though Stokes was said to have had a large hand in the conception.
Upon completion, The Ansonia boasted a roof garden with two pools, a basement swimming pool, an art collection, a towering rooftop skylight, a two-story mansard roof, turreted corner towers, balconies, and balustrades.
Stokes also harbored a virtual circus of animals onsite. Several geese, goats, ducks, a bear, a pig, and 500 chickens made their home in the roof garden, while seals were stationed in a fountain in the lobby.
Each of The Ansonia’s 340 suites featured countless then cutting-edge amenities such as an early form of air conditioning, electric stoves, a tubing system to deliver messages, and hot and cold running water.
According to a 2005 New York magazine article, Stokes was not a fan of insurance companies and hoped to avoid using them in any of the dealings with his new building. As such, he went so far as to establish a company that manufactured a strong terra-cotta that would help fireproof The Ansonia. The interior walls were also built incredibly thick for the same purpose, making the hotel units largely soundproof, which made the site attractive to musicians such as conductor Arturo Toscanini, pianist Igor Stravinsky, and opera singers Lauritz Melchior, Ezio Pinza, Enrico Caruso, and Lily Pons, who all stayed on the premises at one time or another. Other luminaries who checked in included Billie Burke, Florenz Ziegfeld, Babe Ruth, and Jack Dempsey. The Ansonia was also where Arnold “Chick” Gandil and some of his fellow Chicago White Sox players cooked up the scheme to throw 1919 World Series.
The 1930s and ‘40s were not kind to The Ansonia. Due to the Great Depression, the site began to lose revenue causing all of the hotel facilities, including restaurants, to be shut down and the building was eventually transformed into an apartment house. During World War II, the property was stripped of all of its metal detailing, which was then sent to be used for war supplies, and its large skylight covered over with tar to satisfy the blackout ordinances.
The structure fell into such disrepair that it even faced demolition by its then owner in 1970. Thankfully, Ansonia residents and concerned local citizens stepped in and had the building landmarked, protecting it from being razed. In 1978, the property was purchased by investor Jesse Krasnow who began a lengthy restoration process. His idea of restoration was vastly different from most of the residents, though, and in 1980 they banded together, filed a lawsuit against Krasnow, and began a rent strike. There was dissention among the ranks, though, and a smaller group wound up breaking off and filing a different lawsuit. Of the tenuous situation, journalist Steven Gaines said in the same New York magazine article, “The Ansonia Hotel became the single most litigated residence in the history of New York City. A housing-court judge was assigned full-time to the case, and over the next ten years, Krasnow found himself cast in the role of one of the city’s most villainous landlords.” Jesse eventually converted the Ansonia to a condominium building, bought out the most troubled tenants, and set the property on a more copasetic path. He still owns the building today.
One look at The Ansonia’s uniquely arresting architecture and it is easy to see how it has wound up onscreen so many times over the years – far too many times for me to fully chronicle here, but I’ll try.
In Single White Female, The Ansonia served as the apartment building of Allison Jones (Bridget Fonda), where she first lived with her philandering boyfriend, Sam Rawson (Steven Weber), and then with her psychotic roommate, Hedra Carlson (Jennifer Jason Leigh).
Many great shots of the property were shown in the movie.
Though the interior of Allison’s apartment was a set and not one of The Ansonia’s actual units . . .
. . . the building’s grand interior staircase, which spans 17 floors, was utilized in the filming.
Curmudgeon actor Willy Clark (Walter Matthau) lived at The Ansonia in the 1975 comedy The Sunshine Boys.
That same year, the alley that runs behind The Ansonia appeared in Three Days of the Condor as the spot where Joseph Turner (Robert Redford) engaged in a shootout.
Two Brittany Murphy productions have been shot at The Ansonia. In the 2001 thriller Don’t Say a Word, the building served as the home of Dr. Nathan R. Conrad (Michael Douglas).
And at the beginning of the 2003 comedy Uptown Girls, Brittany’s character, Molly, called a top floor residence home.
In the 2006 comedy My Super Ex-Girlfriend, G-Girl (Uma Thurman) puts out a massive fire at The Ansonia.
The Ansonia served as the home of Rowena Price (Halle Berry) in the 2007 thriller Perfect Stranger.
The building masked as the fictional Upper East Side Drake residential hotel, supposedly located at 999 Park Avenue, on the 2012 television series 666 Park Avenue.
The real life interior of The Ansonia was featured in the pilot episode of the series. Those interiors were later re-built on a soundstage at Cine Magic Riverfront Studios in Brooklyn for all subsequent filming once the show was picked up.
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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Ansonia, from Single White Female, is located at 2109 Broadway on New York’s Upper West Side.
I had such high hopes for the place, too! Being that we saw no less than thirty pies make their way out the door for delivery in the short time that we were dining there, though, I am guessing that it is the pizzas that have kept people coming back to this place time and time again for over six decades.
