Travelling On My Own

THE PICCADILLY,  New York City

Piccadilly Hotel 1929

     My first hotel all on my own  was New York’s Piccadilly in the Spring of 1968.  It was right in the heart of the theatre district, off  Times Square at West 45^th Street.  Its brochure boasted it as “the meeting place of the celebrities,” though the only one I ever saw there was Orson Bean, a television personality of the day.

  Another ad said the Piccadilly was “smartly located in the center of everything!”   I am pretty sure I could see Sardi’s from my window, and that was already pretty exciting for me.  It was big and booming and old fashioned.  Certainly not luxurious, but I loved what I perceived as its cosmopolitan atmosphere. 

(Photo Greensboro Record)

I was working for the Greensboro afternoon newspaper at the time, where I reported on school news and church notices, among other things.  Dottie wrote about show business, and her beat was needless to say more interesting.    

She was a bit of a local celebrity, seriously overweight and a dedicated drinker.  We worked together and we often did our drinking together.  We became great friends, and it was she who steered me to the Piccadilly as an inexpensive, conveniently located place to sleep. 

In the sixties and seventies it housed the ground-floor Scandia Restaurant known for its smorgasbord, adjacent to the Circus Bar.  I never ate there, because it seemed expensive and “smorgasbord” somehow sounded so foreign at the time.

I later learned that Ginger Rogers had lived there with her mother, Leila, when she was just starting out in the musical theatre in New York around 1930. I once had tea with G.R. when she was doing “Mame” in London, but I didn’t ask her anything about the Piccadilly.  

Early Ginger circa 1930

 The hotel’s entire crystal chandeliered ballroom, dating from 1928, was bought by a Detroit plastics factory when the hotel was razed in 1982.  The purchase included eight turn-of-the-century portraits painted directly onto the room’s pine panelling.

The Marriott Marquis now stands on the site.

The main restaurant and ballroom

As for Dottie, she died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 42.  I fully expected a similarly early demise, and I was certainly heading in that direction.  However, life rarely works out as you’d expect, so here I am, against all odds, healthy and happy forty years on.

-o- 

SIDEBAR:  Fan mail still coming in 

    When I started jotting down these memories, I checked Google to see what kind of photos I might unearth, wondering if anyone else even remembered the old Piccadilly.

     To my surprise, I discovered something akin to a parallel world where Piccadilly aficionados communicate on various websites about their experiences at this old Times Square landmark.

     I contacted a few, including the last Piccadilly owner’s granddaughter, to get permission to include their comments.  Here are some:

     Ricky says, “The first time I stayed at the Piccadilly, I can remember our room had wallpaper with huge yellow flowers on it and matching bedspreads. One night there was a horrible, very loud clanging noise that woke me up. I called down and the operator told me, very nicely, ‘That’s just the radiator, hon’. Being an innocent boy from the Midwest,  I said “Oh, thank you” ... and went back to sleep."

     Jo came to the Piccadilly at age 10 in 1975 with her Dad all the way from Australia.  It was part of what she described as an “epic trip to honor the wishes of my late mother” who had died the previous year.  “It was kind of run down like most of Times Square at that time, but I thought it was the most exciting place in the world.  I adored watching the Winston cigarette guy blow smoke rings from the billboard from our window.”

     Kate (speaking with Lisa, the hotel owner’s granddaughter):

     “My Dad was the Master Carpenter at the Booth Theatre right across from the hotel for over 40 years.   Since he had to work holidays, we always had Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners at your hotel. We were a family of 8 and we always loved the food, the atmosphere and knew all the wonderful waiters and bartenders !. We had so many fantastic times there and were heartbroken when we found out its fate. To this day I miss the Hotel Piccadilly sooooo much and will never forget our cherished times there.”

     Marilyn says:  "My sister was executive housekeeper and I worked in the laundry room on weekends with the nicest bunch of maids and housemen.  And especially the owner, Mr. K, he was so good to my two kids.  Carmen, I miss you and Sammy and Bernice.  Please find me on facebook.”

     I have saved the most touching for the last.  From a French site, I have translated these lines from Maugerie, a testimony to the Piccadilly as well as to a long lost love:

     “I have just discovered a book of matches from the Hotel Piccadilly, which brings back a flood of memories.  I was a young French man, visiting New York for the first time in 1974 with Helene, my girl friend, and we spent several nights at this hotel.  It was enormous and old and had seen better days, but it had a soul.

     “I retain an immense tenderness in my heart for Helene, who might have become my wife if our lives had not taken different directions … and remembering the Piccadilly today only intensifies my melancholy for a lost love.” 

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CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

Ginger Rogers was also mentioned in blog No. 28, "Ginger and Me!" 
(to access, click on above title).

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

Next Friday:  Back to Taormina, introducing Clementina La Floresta