Hudson Sky Terrace (Hudson Hotel)

Our old review called the Sky Terrace a Garden of Eden on the fifteenth floor, open in summer to hotel guests only, and reckoned a tropical drink in a hammock over midtown might be worth sneaking in for. In April 2009 the roof of the Hudson Hotel, at 356 West 58th Street near Ninth Avenue, was getting ready for another season, with a soft opening on April 21¹.

The building had other lives first. It went up in 1928 as the American Women's Association's clubhouse and residence for young women, 959 single rooms in all². In 1941, after the association went bankrupt, the building became the Henry Hudson Hotel². Morgans Hotel Group bought it in 1997 and, after a three-year renovation, turned it into the Hudson Hotel².

The hotel closed in November 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the roof went with it^{2, 3}. The hotel has since been dropped from the plans for the building, and the proposal now calls for 444 units of housing, 138 of them permanently affordable². If the plan holds, a building that started out as a residence will be one again².