The Drake Hotel was a Roaring 20s–era New York mainstay, and later home to the silent-film star Lillian Gish, in the 40s; the fashionable Shepheard’s nightclub, in the 60s; and the saloonkeeper Toots Shor, in the 70s. Transient guests over the years included Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali, the Who, Judy Garland, Led Zeppelin (who in 1973 was relieved of $200,000 from the hotel’s safe-deposit box, a crime that was never solved), Barry Goldwater, Glenn Gould, and Jimi Hendrix. It went up in 1926 and was demolished in 2007.
Now occupying the Drake’s footprint on the square block bordered by Park and Madison Avenues and 56th and 57th Streets is the 432 Park Avenue Condominium (“TALLEST RESIDENTIAL TOWER IN THE HEMISPHERE,” claims its Web site), an 85-story Rafael Viñoly–designed skyline blighter on Billionaires’ Row, whose nominal residents have included Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez, art dealer and Trump pardonee Helly Nahmad, investment manager Lew Sanders, fashion designer David Chu, hedge-funder Mitch Julis, and the Saudi shopping-mall mogul Fawaz Al Hokair.
