See inside the historic Gramercy Park Hotel's liquidation sale, where people wait in line for hours and spend thousands on artwork, embroidered chairs, and plush pillows

• Most everything inside the famed Gramercy Park Hotel in NYC is on sale to the public.

• An assortment of items is for sale, from soup spoons to embroidered chairs to cabinets.

• Prices range anywhere from $1 for stationery to $5,000 for hotel artwork.

It's not every day in New York City that an iconic place like the Gramercy Park Hotel, nestled next to the private park of the same name, holds a liquidation sale.

The Gramercy Park Hotel opened in 1925 and catered — usually with an air of privacy and discretion — to former presidents, legendary musicians, and athletes. Its polished, bohemian clientele had a flair for luxury and sophistication.

But a messy drama unfolded as ownership changed hands. The hotel's operator, RFR Holding and its cofounder Aby Rosen, were eventually evicted following a lawsuit that accused them of not paying rent.

Now, mostly everything — from soup spoons to entire beds, and curtain tassels to sensual artwork — is being liquidated and is on sale to the public. Because of the "overwhelming response from former guests, clients and staff wanting to purchase memorabilia" from the Gramercy Park Hotel, the auctioneers elected for a two-part liquidation, according to Best Buy Auctioneers.

The first phase consisted of a private liquidation sale for certain buyers. The second phase is open to the public. Prices are set by the auctioneers, who have experience selling restaurants, fitness centers, offices, hotels, and conference centers.

"The cheapest is a dollar for stationery and $5,000 for one piece of art," one of the auctioneers, Vivia, told Insider. The sale is set to go on for at least another month.

I arrived at the Gramercy Park Hotel around 1 p.m. to find a thick crowd of people waiting at the entrance.

Gramercy Park is one of Manhattan's oldest neighborhoods, known for its quiet, residential feel. The hotel — with its 185 guestrooms and suites, upscale bars, and rooftop terrace — has long played host to a cache of guests: Madonna, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, John F. Kennedy, Babe Ruth, The Rolling Stones, Humphrey Bogart, Blondie, The Clash, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bono, the list goes on.

There was a throng of people waiting to go inside, and I had a feeling I was in for a good time when I saw a set of elegant chairs.

The crowd wasn't moving when I arrived but I could tell people were bristling with excitement from their smiles and the light chatter. I saw people loading furniture into SUVs and a lovely set of stately, embroidered tapestry chairs waiting to be transported to their new home.

I couldn't see anything inside the hotel yet. I headed towards the back of the line, which stretched around the corner and down the block.

While the liquidation is free to enter, you'll have to pay in time.

I wasn't surprised to see a line, especially reading all the buzz online. One TikTok video of the sale now has over 750,000 views.

Roughly 1,000 people have come to the sale every day, the auction house said.

I saw an assortment of people waiting in line: a mother with her newborn, young couples, and small groups of friends. I counted 126 people in line as I made my way to the back. As I waited, I heard one passerby say she waited for four hours the other day. The line didn't look too long, so I guessed It'd be about 30 minutes.

When I reached the front of the line, I saw a couple of shoppers leave the hotel with a piece of artwork and a red, studded mirror.

One of the main reasons people were waiting in line for so long and spending hundreds or thousands at the sale was because they all wanted a piece of history.

For one shopper, this red mirror is just one piece of the city she was saving. She already found an entire New York City traffic light at a flea market.

"I want to have a bar one day with some NYC stuff," she told Insider.

After an hour of waiting, I made it inside. I noticed the opulent chandelier right away.

One auctioneer told me that there's already been at least one bid on the chandelier, but that the chandelier is off the market. Why? "I have no idea. We were told it's not for sale," was all I got from an auctioneer.

It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience to see bits and pieces of the hotel's history.

It looked like a maze: lush, velvet sofas with $55 matching pillows pushed against the walls,  $500 ring-pull cabinets, and $300 mirrored-glass coffee tables. Small picture books of "The Seasons of New York" and copies of Kerby Jean-Raymond's "Surface" dotted the landscape. The grand, beaming Venetian chandelier over our heads shined over an otherwise shadowy and musty lobby.

One of my favorite parts of the experience was watching people's reaction to more furniture being unloaded into the lobby from one of the hotel's 190 guest rooms.

There was so much furniture that I could barely see the famed Aubusson rug in the lobby designed by Julian Schnabel, the Brooklyn artist behind many of the lauded art pieces inside the hotel.

There were muted conversations happening around me and I was entertained by some of what I heard.

"Sir, the alcohol is not for sale. I don't know how they keep appearing," one worker said.

"How do you know the prices?" one person asked an auctioneer. "You just ask one of us," he responded. I'm not sure the auctioneer answered their question, but I think they caught his drift.

Others lightly scoffed at the prices when they heard them, like one person who joked they could carve Gramercy Park Hotel's logo himself or another person who repeated the price of a cabinet several times in disbelief.

"I don't think I'll need any of this stuff," one person said.

Good luck accessing the other floors. You could try on the weekends, though.

There's less access to the upstairs rooms than when the sale first started. Now, anyone who is interested in purchasing and seeing a few of the hotel's guestrooms and suites upstairs will have a better chance on weekends, Benigno told Insider.

I saw that red mirror again, and they were everywhere.

The prices seemed to be arbitrarily set by the auctioneers. Depending on which auctioneer you asked, you might be quoted different prices with just a single, passing glance. I overheard the same red mirror I saw outside of the hotel being quoted at $400 —  $100 less than what one person paid.

I heard lamps being quoted for $400, leather tables for $500, television monitors were anywhere from $150 to $250, and drawers could cost up to $500.

The sofas, I found out, were not yet for sale because they were "part of the building so they have to stay here," Joseph Benigno, the owner of Best Buy Auctioneers and lead auctioneer, said, adding that there are around a dozen tenants still living in the hotel.

There have been whispers that the building will be turned into condominiums. But auctioneers told Insider that it's just a rumor.

The atmosphere truly felt like an auction, which prices being called out loud, and a regular stream of announcements made by the lead auctioneer.

Benigno kept one eye on traffic and the other on furniture sales. He would let in a dozen or so people at a time, and I didn't count more than 50 people inside the lobby and Rose Bar rooms while I was there.

The second room was stuffed with a myriad of hotel artwork, velvet chairs and chaises, wood tables, and one random book published in the 60s titled "Music in the Classic Period".

The second room housed the former Rose Bar, what used to be an upscale, bohemian cocktail parlor. One shopper tried to purchase two bottles of Bombay Sapphire Gin, much to the annoyance of the auctioneer, who wondered out loud who kept supplying the alcohol. He was one of many shoppers I saw who were rather possessive over their found treasures.

The artwork all had a raw grunginess about them. I saw copies of the same photograph in varying sizes as well as a series of paintings.

While Andy Warhol was a signature touch in the Rose Bar and Jean-Michel Basquiat could easily be stumbled into, I didn't see any Warhols or Basquiats for sale to the public.

When I announced my surprise at how no one seemed to want to purchase this photograph of a woman, one woman said "She's $1,000!" Another person overheard my comment and said it's a steal because he had seen the same artwork online for double the price. Artwork was amongst the most expensive items for sale at the liquidation, according to Best Buy Auctioneers.

There were some practical items that did catch my eye, like this vintage American Tourister luggage case.

While I didn't see much use for most of the items I saw, I was really interested in the books — mostly New York City-themed picture books meant for coffee tables and tourists — including one book called "Music in the Classic Period" by Reinhard G. Pauly with a stamped inscription on the first page showing its journey to the Gramercy Park Hotel from the Wausau East Senior High School's Music Department.

I also saw Ric Burns and James Sanders' "New York: An Illustrated History" on sale for $30, which is half the sticker price.

I saw some standard hotel items like bathrobes and slippers embellished with the Gramercy Park Hotel logo.

For those who are especially attached to the hotel and artistic vision belonging to Julian Schnabel, I saw some items for sale with the hotel's logo, which Schnabel had designed. There were coffee cup sleeves, room slippers, as well as the hotel's signature bathrobes for $100. The GPH umbrellas, t-shirts and hats were sold quickly, according to Avenue Magazine Editor-in-Chief Peter Davis. Those were already gone when I arrived. There were dozens of bottles of the hotel's Aesop clove bud and anise mouthwash bottles for sale, as well.

"The best stuff was the GPH logo items — the bathrobes and the umbrellas," Davis told Insider. "The tee shirts and hats vanished fast. Stuff was pretty pricey for a city-mandated auction/sale! If I was opening a gothic restaurant I would have snagged some of the upholstered tapestry chairs. The dishes and plates were so basic and boring and not 'luxury hotel'-like — think high school cafeteria."

I heard shoppers shoot their shot by negotiating, but the auctioneers told me they were not accepting any side deals of any sort.

People easily spent thousands on the spot, including one woman who made several trips to the hotel and spent more than $10,000 each time.

"Well, it probably took them more than an hour, but she spent $33,000," one auctioneer, Mark, told Insider.

There were people who tried to negotiate the prices, some jokingly and some who were serious, according to Best Buy Auctioneers. But "100% of the time, they kept walking and paid the price and left," said Mark, one of the auctioneers.

Nur Khan, the former creative director of the hotel's Rose Bar, told Insider that he revisited his old haunt with his business partner, John McDonald, owner of several downtown restaurants, including Lure Fishbar and Bowery Meat Market.

"I picked up some velvet ottomans from Rose Bar and put them in my current Bar Butterfly," Khan said. "Also bought some large bolts of velvet fabric and brand new rugs that were in the large suites."

This shopper spent $200 on pillows and luggage stands for her Airbnb.

I left the liquidation feeling like I wouldn't be able to replicate this experience anywhere else. The most recent auction of a similar caliber was in 2020, when the soon-to-be-renovated Waldorf Astoria held an auction for 80,000 items. Now that I've experienced the Gramercy Park Hotel sale, I wish I was at Waldorf Astoria auction.

Even though I don't personally have any ties to the hotel, I witnessed a relationship people shared with the building that was visibly special. And public auctions seem to be a low-barrier way to bridge history with the present.

"It's a hidden part of the American capital system," Mark, one of the auctioneers, told Insider. 
"You're gonna get an education about the American capital system, you're not going to get anywhere else. If you don't come, you're never going to know that this exists in a way that it does."

Meanwhile, those with a personal connection to the Gramercy Park Hotel walked out with more than just household goods.

"The one thing that wasn't for sale was the GPH memories," Peter Davis, the Avenue Magazine Editor-in-Chief, told Insider. "Everyone in the NYC social scene has one. I remember meeting Lil' Kim at a [Marc Jacobs] opening party. I congratulated her on her release from prison and she gave me a huge hug and said "I love you baby." What a cool moment. I was a regular cohost of the Rose Bar's Halloween party and all the cohost's rooms became mini after-hours parties. If those walls could gossip!"

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