Not so elegant accomodations
From the same magazine that brought you the Vernonware ad, here's the Vanderbilt Hotel in NYC:
This grand hotel was built around 1913, and one of the more interesting surviving features is a room with vaulted ceilings that was rumored to be private train platform for the Vanderbilt family. (That space is now a restaurant.) Enrico Caruso lived here as well. It was turned into apartments in the 1960s, which is brings me to my own close encounter with the building.
Back in 1980s Paul spent the better part of a year working in NYC on a rail project at Grand Central. His employer decided that it would cost less to get a few apartments than bother with hotel rooms due to the length of the job. They sub-let several rooms in this building. Paul stayed in a one-room furnished apartment. Believe me, the place was nothing to write home about. The entire living space - including the bijou kitchen - was about the size of our living room and rented for approximately the same amount of money that we were making in house payments. As of early 2015, rents for the same size apartment were going for far more than double our house payment.
I'm sure this was a very luxurious hotel in its day, and it still is a nice address. It was just strange to see this building staring back at me from the pages of a magazine.
Here's an interesting history of the building.