The Ansonia Hotel (ten stories) at 2109 Broadway between W. 73rd & W. 74th streets. was designed by Paul E. M. Duboy. There was a central tower to rise in the middle of the building that was never constructed. It was the first air-conditioned building in New York. William Earle Dodge Stokes, an eccentric heir to the Phelps Dodge copper fortune, developed the 2,500-room building, erected between 1899 and 1904. (He kept farm animals on the roof which included '500 chicken, many ducks, about six goats and a small bear.') This is perhaps New York's most famous apartment building aside for the nearby Dakota on Central Park West and W. 72nd Street.

The hotel suffered when it became linked with gambling and shady characters just two years after it opened, when, with Stokes's encouragement, Al Adams, the notorious millionaire 'Policy King' of the New York numbers racket, moved into the Ansonia straight from jail at Sing Sing. He stayed two years, bothered by police and sought out by reporters. Stokes found Adams dead of a self-inflicted bullet wound. The coroner ruled it a suicide. Some thought Stokes had done it. After an ugly and scandalous divorce, Stokes died across the street at age 74 in 1926.

Chicago White Sox players assembled in the Ansonia hotel room of first baseman Arnold 'Chick' Gandil in 1919 and agreed to throw the World Series for about $10,000 a man. The scam was financed by Arnold 'The Big Bankroll' Rothstein the gambler. The Sox lost five games to three. Baseball's biggest scandal erupted.

Jack Dempsey trained for his 1919 heavyweight championship bout against Jess Willard while living there. Babe Ruth lived here for a time.

The famous from other professions have stayed and lived here over the years: opera stars Geraldine Farrar, Feodor Chaliapin, Lauritz Melchior, Ezio Pinza, Lily Pons and Enrico Caruso; musicians Arthuro Toscanini, Igor Stravinksy, Mischa Elman, Yehudi Menuhin; impresarios Florenz Ziegfeld and Sol Hurok; authors Theodore Dreiser, Cornell Woolrich, and Elmer Rice. The musicians and opera singers could practice and not annoy neighbors because the residences are virtually soundproof. Some of the masonry walls are 3 feet thick.