Sherry's Hotel, ca. 1905.

Sherry's was a restaurant established in 1880 by Louis Sherry. Popular among New York's elite society, the restaurant moved locations a few times in its first two decades (from 38th Street and Sixth Avenue to 37th Street and Fifth Avenue). Just before the turn of the century the society mainstay moved in to a new hotel building at Fifth Avenue and 44th Street (seen here). The ballroom at the hotel was well-known for catering lavish dinner parties. The most extravagant event might have been the party thrown by industrialist C.K.G. Billings in 1903. As the guests drank champagne and dined on a fine meal, they did so all while seated on a horse! Billings was a passionate horseman who built a 25,000 square foot horse stable and accompanying mansion uptown. Originally the dinner was to be at the stables but instead, he switched venues to the hotel. The "horseback dinner" was called by the New York Times “one of the most novel that has ever been given in the city.”

The Sherry Hotel and Restaurant moved out of this building in 1919 and Sherry's restaurant moved into the Hotel Netherland on Fifth Avenue and 59th Street (where its name lives in the 1927-completed Sherry Netherland Hotel). The building at 44th Street became offices for the Guaranty Trust Company building in 1919. Undergoing a major renovation in the 1960s, the building had 12 more stories added and had its intricate facade replaced with limestone. Today the building still stands with a modern two-story commercial base.