3. The Algonquin, 59 W 44th Street

The original developer and owner of The Algonquin Hotel was Albert Foster, but the name and literary legacy of the hotel are credited to its first manager, Frank Case. Originally, Foster planned to name his apartment hotel The Puritan. However, Case, who had worked in hotels throughout his life and had been recently employed at the Iroquois Hotel in Buffalo, suggested the name “The Algonquin.” The Puritan sounded too straight-laced for Case and he preferred a Native American name over a European-inspired one like those given to the majority of other hotels.

This storied hotel is located in the Theater District at 59 W. 44th Street. Beginning with the men and women, including critic Alexander Woollcott and poet Dorothy Parker, who sat at the Round Table in 1919, the legacy of the hotel as a temporary home for storytellers and wordsmiths only grew. By 1956, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe composed the music for My Fair Lady, out of suite 908. The Round Table’s descendants at The New Yorker, a magazine founded with money won at a Round Table Poker Game, wrote a critique of the musical in 2018. Until recent years, the hotel offered a discounted lunch to aspiring writers.