Walkabout

Find a middle class native New Yorker, especially a Brooklynite, over the age of sixty, and you’ll probably find that they’d been to the St. George at least once. They could have been an adult, or a child with their parents. Perhaps it was a special night in one of the restaurants, or ballrooms, or more than likely, it was a trip to the swimming pool. The famous St. George salt water pool was a draw for many in the city, both young and old, as well as for the famous who still flocked to the hotel in the late 1940s and 50s.

The St. George was still THE place to stay in Brooklyn, during the post-war years, and the list of the famous is pretty impressive. Frank Sinatra and his entourage stayed here, as did the following actors and entertainers: Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, who was a regular, Shelly Winters, Angela Lansbury, Duke Ellington and his orchestra, Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra, and authors Thomas Wolfe and Norman Mailer. Lena Horne, Veronica Lake, Cary Grant and Norma Shearer all had photographs taken at the pool arcade. So too did aquatic actors Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Crabbe and Esther Williams. Leonard Bernstein recorded Tchaikovsky’s Romeo & Juliet fantasy overture with the New York Philharmonic, for Columbia Records, here in the hotel on January 28, 1957. Also that year, Burt Lancaster starred in the movie version of “Sweet Smell of Success”, and one of the scenes took place at the Egyptian Roof Club, in the St. George Tower. (more…)

(Tower Night Club at the Hotel St. George. Photo: St. George Tower Yahoo group)

The Bing & Bing years for the Hotel St. George coincided with some of the best and worst years of the 20th century. The large Manhattan-based real estate development company bought the hotel in 1922, taking over from the Tumbridge family, the original owners of the hotel. Captain William Tumbridge had created a luxury hotel that attracted some of the crème de la crème of Brooklyn and visiting society, and catered to a wealthy clientele that wanted the convenience of a luxury apartment close to Manhattan. The hotel also advertised itself as a “family hotel”, where families could stay a few days, or board for months, or a season, if necessary. By the time the Bing brothers came along, the image of the hotel was slowly changing. They would preside over the hotel’s most storied years, when it became the quintessential middle class retreat; home to vacationing out of towners, conventioneers, wedding guests, and an occasional celebrity. It was also a destination in of itself, with ballrooms, restaurants, nightclubs, bars, and lounges, and oh yeah, that world famous salt water swimming pool.

In order to accommodate the masses, the Bing’s needed more room. The 1924 Emery Roth addition over the subway stop at Clark Street was a masterful engineering feat. It was imperative that the construction of this new 12 story Renaissance Revival building not interfere with the elevators leading to the subway, or the subway tunnels beneath. Roth solved the problem by running his elevators, stairways and mechanics in the adjoining laundry building, running along Henry Street. The added 370 rooms were but the first step, as Roth was now working on the centerpiece of the entire complex, the massive 32 story St. George Tower. This would add another 1,200 rooms to the hotel, making it, at 2,632 rooms, the largest hotel in New York City. (more…)

(Hotel St. George in 1917)

In the 1980’s, a television show called “Hotel”, aired for about seven years, which chronicled the goings on in a large, swanky hotel in San Francisco called the “St. Gregory”. Guests and staff interacted; love, larceny, and everything in between took place in her corridors and rooms, all under the watch of the hotel manager, played by James Brolin. A hundred years before, that could have been the Hotel St. George, in Brooklyn Heights. James Brolin would have played Captain William Tumbridge, not the manager, but the proprietor of the St. George, Brooklyn’s largest and most elegant hotel. He probably would have done a great job, too, as Tumbridge was rather larger than life, although unlike Brolin, slight of stature.

The Captain had been a real sea captain, a veteran of the Civil War, master of his own ships, even a shipwreck or two, as well as a Wall Street wordsmith. Part One of our story is the sea tale of that part of his life. In Part Two, we learn about his building of a hotel empire, the St. George growing every year since its founding in 1885, to become, by the 1890’s, a 1,000 room residential and traveler’s hotel. In Part Three, the hotel continues to grow, becoming more and more luxurious, catering more than ever to its residential clientele, with elegant amenities and architectural splendor. We also learn a bit more about the rather contentious Captain, a man who was quick to throw anyone out of his hotel that he didn’t approve of, and also quick to throw a punch, when needed. Today, we’ll wrap up the Tumbridge years, filled with more fights, litigation, police action, and sadly, tragedy. (more…)

In the early 1890’s, the Hotel St. George’s owner, Captain William Tumbridge, announced that he had hired one of Brooklyn’s most prominent architects, Montrose W. Morris, to design a new wing for the ever-growing hotel. It was the perfect match. Both men were a bit larger than life, especially in the ego and self-promotion departments, and Morris’ reputation for expertise in designing high end luxury accommodations was well-deserved, as was the St. George’s reputation as Brooklyn’s finest hotel. What could be better? Tumbridge held a press conference at which he stated, “The Hotel St. George now compares favorably with some of the best hotels in the world, but we are going to enlarge the building on the Clark St. side…We are going to have a magnificent entrance, 50 feet wide by 160 feet in depth. It will be decorated by Tiffany & Co, and the desk will be enclosed by cathedral glass of a unique design. Every modern convenience will be introduced in the hotel, and there will be bowling alleys, shuffleboard, a swimming pool and a Turkish bath attached for the amusement and convenience of guests. The present office will be converted into a smoking room, Turkish parlors with Oriental decorations of a most attractive character, and tea parlors. The mosaic tiling on the new office floor will have some novel and beautiful patriotic designs commemorating the events in the war with Spain.”

Tumbridge went on to say that the new wing would incorporate new bachelor’s apartments, a fast growing market, and that the hotel would continue to be the first rate family hotel it had always been. He noted that the St. George had been forced to turn away customers during the last winter, due to lack of space, even though the hotel had almost 800 rooms. The hotel also had huge summer patronage, much of which was from local men who stayed in the city to work, while their families went away for the summer. Rather than be alone in their own homes, these men, Tumbridge said, preferred to summer at the St. George. The new rooms would be able to accommodate them well. (more…)

(1907 postcard of fireplace in the lobby. Hotel St. George, Brooklyn)

Captain William Tumbridge was a true self-made man. Unlike many of his fellow “captains of industry”, Captain Tumbridge was the real deal; an English-born veteran of the US Navy, who fought in the Civil War, and later, was the captain of his own ships, which sailed the seas around the world. His early life story is told in Part One. When he finally settled down in Brooklyn, he decided to build and run the largest and finest hotel in the world. He situated his establishment in Brooklyn Heights, and named it the Hotel St. George, after a tavern that once stood on the same location. The hotel opened in 1885, and it was a grand and immediate success. It was so successful, that in the space of the next fifteen years, he would keep building new wings, until by the turn of the 20th century; there were over 1,000 rooms in the hotel.

Although he left the running of the day to day hotel business to a manager, Tumbridge kept a hands-on approach to his guests and the hotel. He picked the menus for the restaurant, and was generally on-site to both glad-hand and trouble shoot. Tumbridge wanted to run a first class swanky hotel, but somehow, he seemed too often attract the attention that was more reminiscent of a shore leave in a seedy, and dangerous port on the Barbary Coast. (more…)

(Hotel St. George in 1912. Montrose Morris addition to far right.)

The story of the Hotel St. George starts not with the building of New York City’s largest hotel, but with the dreams of a young lad who thought he had found his calling sailing the seas, and an early life that reads like a boy’s adventure story. He was English, born in 1845 to parents living at the Cape of Good Hope, in Cape Town. At the age of four, William Tumbridge’s father died, and his mother took him back to London, on that long voyage from Southern Africa back to Great Britain, where the child learned to love the sea. By the time young Tumbridge was thirteen, he was apprenticed on a brig, called the Satellite, which in 1858, wrecked on a voyage between the Black Sea and Glasgow. The crew was picked up by a fishing boat and left in Malta, where they worked their way back to England. That experience might have finished the seaworthy ambitions of most, but not William Tumbridge. He passed his officer’s examinations at seventeen, and became the second mate on a ship bound for Brazil. From Brazil, he made his way, at last, to America, arriving just in time for the Civil War.

The Union needed experienced sailors, so William Tumbridge enlisted in the American Navy. After a stint at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, he ended up on a vessel called the Tacomy, which was to be part of the northern blockade of southern ports. The trip south was far from comfortable, with too many men crammed onto the ship; so that many had to sleep on the exposed upper decks, and the men were fed by being tossed biscuits into the crowd, like a farmer feeds chickens. When the ship reached Fort Fisher, in North Carolina, Tumbridge was one of a group of volunteers who landed further along the shore to stage a diversion for the main attacking force on the fort. (more…)