Midtown's Roosevelt Hotel Closing After Nearly 100 Years: Reports

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — The latest hospitality giant to fall during the pandemic, Midtown's iconic Roosevelt Hotel announced this week that it would close permanently after nearly a century in business.

Facing a steep drop-off in customers since the coronavirus took hold, hotel management told CNN that it would close before the end of the year, "due to the current, unprecedented environment and the continued uncertain impact from COVID-19."

First opened in 1924, the hotel, on East 45th Street off Madison Avenue, is a fixture of the Midtown skyline and has played host to a number of historic moments. It 1948, served as the election headquarters for New York Governor Thomas Dewey, where he prematurely and incorrectly announced on election night that he had defeated incumbent President Harry S. Truman.

Now owned by Pakistan International Airlines, the 1,000-room hotel was named after President Theodore Roosevelt and was once linked to neighboring Grand Central Terminal via an underground passageway.

The hospitality industry has been among the hardest-hit by the pandemic. About 7.5 million workers in the industry lost their jobs in April, CNN reported, and only about half have been hired back.

The Times Square Hilton and Omni Berkshire Place are among the other big-name hotels in New York City to close their doors for good due to economic fallout from the crisis.

This article originally appeared on the Midtown-Hell's Kitchen Patch