The Apartment Hotel

The biggest in Tudor City: No. 45, No. 25, No. 5, and The Woodstock.

Today, the answer to a question that's long been on our mind. 

No. 45, No. 25, No. 5, and The Woodstock are the four largest buildings in Tudor City, big enough to have their own designation, apartment hotels. The apartment hotel differed from the apartment house in one important way: the service pantry featured no heating element. 

It seemed rather implausible to us. 

Then, we came across a Christopher Gray column about One Fifth Avenue, another apartment hotel opened in 1927. He writes 

This was not a conventional apartment house but an apartment hotel with two- and three-room units, each with a serving pantry for food brought up by service elevator from a central restaurant on the ground floor.

In fact, the apartment hotel was a widespread fiction of the period; 'non-housekeeping' residential buildings could be built taller and deeper than regular multiple dwellings because they were considered commercial buildings.

Tenants in fact usually set up full kitchens in the serving pantries. 

That answers our question. Hot plate, anybody?