On the east side of Fifth Avenue, the landmark Sherry Netherland Hotel (781 Fifth Ave.) was built by Louis Sherry the ice-cream and candy magnate, as an apartment hotel in 1927. Today it is a cooperative apartment building and a hotel that rents out rooms and suites with the owners permission to guests. Designed by Schultze & Weaver, the building helped make luxury high rise living desirable. In his day, Louis Sherry was a competitor to the famous Delmonico's restaurant. Louis Sherry started out with a confectionary shop and expanded into home catering for the wealthy. The name Louis Sherry lives on as Louis Sherry Brands of Chicago which sells, ironically, sugar-free packaged foods. Louis Sherry is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York.
Schultze & Weaver (1921 –1951) were important hotel designers.Leonard Schultze (b. 1878 Chicago, IL – d. White Plains, NY 1951) believed Paris was the ideal city. He studied architecture at City College and at the architecture school of the Metropolitan Museum of Art under E. L. Masqueray. He served in the Spanish-American War before he began his career. From 1908-11, he served as chief of design for Grand Central Station. He believed architects should spend more time 'blending a new structure with those surrounding it.' 'That's why everyone ought to go at lest once a year to Paris,' he explained. He was a member of Metropolitan of Art, the Architectural League, the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, the Society of Mayflower Descendants, Phi Gamma Delta, The American Yacht Club and the Scarsdale Gold and Country Club. Major S. Fullerton Weaver (b. 1880 Philadelphia, PA – d. NY 1939) was a great-grandnephew of President James Buchanan. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1902 as a civil engineer. In WWI, he served in France in the First Battalion of the 306th Infantry, 77th Division. After the war, he helped organize a group that found jobs for soldiers under the slogan 'New York Jobs for New York Soldiers.' He was a former governor of the New York Real Estate Board. He served as president of the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Queens, and had been a member of Lotos, Oakland Golf, Maidstone and Turf and Field clubs. Schultze and Weaver began their firm in 1921. They designed in many styles, ranging from from English Tudor to French Renaissance. Great hotels were built by them: the Sherry Netherland, the Pierre, The Waldorf Astoria, the Lexington, The Breakers in Palm Beach and the Los Angeles Biltmore. Often they were accused of borrowing designs from others. Enormous lobbies were their trademark (the Sherry Netherland was the exception). Their clients were rich. They also built the Miami Biltmore, The Roney Plaza in Miami Beach; and hotels in Georgia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Canada, and Havana Cuba; and Park Avenue apartment buildings. The Great Depression ended their fortune.
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