The Ansonia

The Ansonia is a building on the Upper West Side of New York City, located at 2109 Broadway, between West 73rd and West 74th Streets. It was originally built as a residential hotel by William Earle Dodge Stokes, the Phelps-Dodge copper heir and shareholder in the Ansonia Clock Company, and it was named for his grandfather, the industrialist Anson Greene Phelps. In 1897, Stokes commissioned French architect Paul Emile Duboy to design the grandest hotel in Manhattan.
Stokes would list himself as "architect-in-chief" for the project and hired Duboy, a sculptor who designed and made the ornamental sculptures on the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, to draw up the plans. New Orleans architect Martin Shepard served as draftsman and assistant superintendent of construction on the project. The assignee of the contractor proceed against Stokes in 1907, suing for $90,000. But Stokes would defend himself, explaining that Duboy was in an insane asylum in Paris, and it was his belief that he was insane when, in 1903, he signed the final certificate on the plans, and should not have been making commitments in Stokes's name concerning the hotel.

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