Hotel Edison

Hotel Edison is a historic Art Deco hotel at 228 West 47th Street in Manhattan’s Theater District, New York City, USA. The 26-storey building opened in 1931 and was designed by architect Herbert J. Krapp, who was also responsible for several of Broadway’s best-known theatres. Commissioned by hotelier Milton J. Kramer, the hotel was named after inventor Thomas Edison, who ceremonially switched on its lights remotely from his home in New Jersey during the opening celebrations. The building occupies a site extending between West 47th and West 46th Streets, with entrances on both sides and an interior passageway decorated with mirrors, geometric detailing and other original Art Deco features. Its association with Broadway extends beyond accommodation. The hotel’s original grand ballroom became the Arena Theatre in 1950 and was subsequently operated as the Edison Theatre until 1991, hosting productions including the long-running revue Oh! Calcutta! The space was restored as the Edison Ballroom in 2008. Another former dining room housed Café Edison, the neighbourhood institution established by Harry and Frances Edelstein in 1980. Nicknamed the Polish Tea Room, it became a gathering place for actors, playwrights and theatre workers before closing in 2014. The hotel also houses The Rum House, a piano and cocktail bar with a history dating to the 1970s.

Hotel Edison has appeared in Naked City (1958–1963), The Godfather (1972), Seinfeld (1989–1998), Bullets over Broadway (1994), Sex and the City (1998–2004), and Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014). Its historic interiors, exterior entrances, former café and cocktail bar have all been used for filming. The adjoining Edison Ballroom, originally part of the hotel, also appears in John Wick (2014).

In Naked City (1958–1963), the hotel appears in an exterior scene involving detective Adam Flint, played by Paul Burke, who is shown kissing his girlfriend outside the building. The police drama was extensively filmed on location throughout New York, using real streets and buildings rather than relying entirely on studio sets. Hotel Edison identifies the scene in its historical account of the property’s screen appearances, although the specific episode has not been established.

In The Godfather (1972), directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Hotel Edison appears immediately before the murder of Luca Brasi, played by Lenny Montana. Acting on instructions from Vito Corleone, Brasi has arranged to meet rival gangster Virgil Sollozzo (Al Lettieri), pretending that he is willing to betray the Corleone family. Brasi is seen walking through the hotel’s Art Deco corridor near its West 46th Street entrance, passing the distinctive mirrored walls and ascending the shallow steps towards the interior. The sequence makes particularly effective use of the long passageway, which allows the camera to follow his solitary approach to the meeting.

Although the film presents Brasi’s arrival and murder as a continuous sequence taking place within the same establishment, the actual killing was filmed at a different location. The restaurant and bar interior where Sollozzo meets Brasi, pins his hand to the counter and has him strangled has been identified as the former Hotel St. George in Brooklyn Heights. The murder scene has frequently been attributed to Sofia’s restaurant at Hotel Edison, but location research has established that the corridor and the killing were filmed separately. Only the approach through the hotel passageway can be securely attributed to Hotel Edison.

In Seinfeld (1989–1998), Hotel Edison appears in the third-season episode The Subway (1992). George Costanza (Jason Alexander) meets an attractive woman on the subway while travelling to a job interview and follows her to a hotel after pretending to be a successful businessman. An exterior establishing shot identifies the building as Hotel Edison. Once inside, George is persuaded to remove his clothes and is handcuffed to a bed, only to discover that the woman intends to rob him. She takes his money and suit, leaving him trapped in the room. The hotel exterior was used for the establishing shot, while the bedroom sequence was filmed on a studio set rather than in an actual Hotel Edison guest room.

In Bullets over Broadway (1994), directed by Woody Allen, the hotel once again contributes its distinctive interior passageway. The corridor doubles for the entrance and lobby area of the building associated with gangster Nick Valenti (Joe Viterelli), who agrees to finance a Broadway production by struggling playwright David Shayne (John Cusack). Shayne and his producer Julian Marx (Jack Warden) are seen walking through the hallway while discussing Valenti’s insistence that his girlfriend, Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly), be given a part in the play despite her lack of acting ability. The location is particularly recognisable because the same passageway appeared more than two decades earlier in The Godfather. The hotel’s interior was used to represent the entrance to Valenti’s premises, rather than the penthouse apartment of actress Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest), which was filmed elsewhere in Manhattan.

In Sex and the City (1998–2004), Hotel Edison appears twice during the fifth-season premiere, Anchors Away (2002), with two separate areas of the building used for different scenes. The first takes place inside Café Edison, where Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) escapes a rainstorm and stops for a bowl of matzo ball soup. Sitting alone in the restaurant, she meets an older woman named Joan, who discusses her romantic life and casually mentions taking lithium. The scene was filmed in the actual café, whose traditional dining room and longstanding association with the theatre district were still intact at the time.

The same episode also uses the hotel’s former Supper Club, now known as the Edison Ballroom, for a Fleet Week celebration. Carrie and her friends join a large gathering of visiting sailors, with the venue’s spacious dance floor and Art Deco interior visible during the party. The ballroom has undergone restoration and alterations since the episode was filmed, but the underlying room remains part of the hotel’s historic complex. Together, the café and ballroom sequences document two very different interiors of Hotel Edison before the later changes to the property.

In Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, the hotel’s Rum House bar appears in two important scenes. The first involves Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), a former Hollywood star attempting to establish himself as a serious Broadway actor, and Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), the volatile actor recruited for his stage production. Following a troubled preview performance, the two men meet at the bar to discuss what happened. Both the interior and the entrance to The Rum House appear in the sequence, although the film makes the establishment seem much closer to the St. James Theatre on West 44th Street than it is in reality.

Riggan returns to The Rum House later in the film and encounters influential theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan), who is sitting at the bar. Their conversation becomes increasingly confrontational as Dickinson makes clear her contempt for Hollywood celebrities attempting to gain acceptance in the theatre world. The encounter takes place inside the actual bar, with its dark wooden interior and counter clearly visible. Location manager Joaquin Prange selected The Rum House for its traditional appearance and its suitability for a scene involving a recovering alcoholic who has begun drinking again. The production occupied the establishment for approximately five days. The apparent proximity between the bar and the St. James Theatre was achieved through the film’s carefully constructed transitions and digital editing, which helped maintain the impression of a nearly continuous camera movement.

In John Wick (2014), the Edison Ballroom at 240 West 47th Street, originally the hotel’s grand ballroom, was used for the interior of the fictional Red Circle nightclub. John Wick (Keanu Reeves) enters the club while pursuing Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen), the son of Russian crime boss Viggo Tarasov, and fights his way through armed security personnel as Iosef attempts to escape. The ballroom’s large interior was transformed with nightclub lighting, music and crowds for the extended action sequence. However, the fictional nightclub was assembled from several New York locations. Its exterior entrance was filmed at the Surrogate’s Court building at 31 Chambers Street in Lower Manhattan, while the underground bathing and pool areas were filmed at AIRE Ancient Baths in Tribeca. The Edison Ballroom provided the nightclub’s main interior rather than these other sections of the sequence.

Seinfeld (1989–1998)

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