Anyone Want a Desk From the Wellington Hotel?

There were still a lot of desks available at the Wellington Hotel liquidation sale. The beds were all but gone, the headboards too. The wardrobes were few and far between. Even a box labeled "luggage holders" sat empty. But the desks and what I could charitably identify as "the worst of the lamps" remained.

Midtown Manhattan’s century-plus old Wellington Hotel shuttered in December of 2021; during the height of the pandemic, it had been used as housing for those without. A few months ago, it was revealed that developer Gary Bartnett’s Extell Development Company had purchased the property. As New York magazine classified it in 2010, Extell "is emblematic of a new type of New York real estate firm that specializes in developing ultraluxury buildings that are akin to gated communities in the sky, where buyers with millions to spend can satisfy nearly any desire without ever stepping outside." In the way that these types of buildings have become interchangeably commonplace, Midtown hotels like the Wellington were also once a dime a dozen: early 20th century properties with non-distinct features, ornate carpeting, big beds, mahogany duped furniture. A night at the three-star establishment would cost you about $229, neither the least nor most expensive stay in New York City that you could muster.

For the past two months, the Wellington has held a slow liquidation sale, handing off the hotel’s myriad furniture and other goods to anyone who comes in off the street with any interest. I popped in Thursday and Friday, the final two days, eager to grab a lamp, maybe. What did anyone buy at a hotel liquidation sale anyway?

Dominick Mirabile of Best Buy Auctioneers ran the show, standing at the center of the torn-down lobby behind a desk, bartering a Bible with a man as I walked in. "Two dollars," the customer offered, to which Dominick accepted. Best Buy Auctioneers had to clear out "800 rooms in eight weeks," no small feat, though Dominick told me most people snagged "whole rooms, bed, wardrobe, headboard, lamp," and all that. No need to stay at the Wellington Hotel if you had Wellington Hotel at home. 

To be fair, I’m sure the Wellington has seen better days; the scene was decidedly less glamorous than the recent Gramercy Park Hotel liquidation sale appeared to have been (also run by Best Buy). To walk around its lobby was to bear witness to all its myriad imperfections and crumblings. A blocked off kitchen bar, a ceiling segment collapsed and exposed, wires dangling just out of reach of patrons. The biggest steals, as far as I could determine, were the media tables: one for Bibles and one for hotel paperbacks. Little I recognized but each looked well-loved, or at least paged through, in its own way. Off to the side of the mini-bookstore was a trash can (was that for sale?) of mostly Laurel and Hardy VHS tapes. The most baffling items were a set of faux-fur covered toboggans, all leaned up against a wall labeled "THREE WOMEN" in the same font as the Lisa Taddeo novel. Had they shot the Three Women adaptation at the Wellington Hotel?

No, Dominick and his compatriot Sal explained to me, those were transported over from another part of the city and were just there for holding. "They did shoot a movie here, though," Sal said. What movie? "Borat."

You could buy just about any kind of chair imaginable, so long as you were content with mix-and-match: tall, low-backed bar seat, rolling black desk chair, simple wooden lobby chairs, or a dining room set fit with red, possibly "Asian-inspired" seat pads. It was admittedly sad to imagine the property transformed into sterile luxury condos, the least cellar door phrase imaginable, but it was also sad to think about staying in the Wellington Hotel. On Thursday, I watched two parents chaperone their adult daughter throughout the sale. She opened and closed a storage locker a few times—"You think you could get clothes in there?" her mother asked, to which the daughter shook her head. My parents stayed in Midtown on their first visit to see me, despite my vague warning of "don’t stay in Midtown." They had to know what it was like, they argued, to be in the thick of it all: close to Times Square, close to the park, close to the shops. "It really is the city that never sleeps, huh?" my mom said after a handful of nights.

Located a few blocks south of Central Park, the Wellington has stood since 1901, now ensconced in historical establishments both going strong—the block-away Carnegie Hall is decked out in promo posters and scaffolding—and shuttered. Across the street sits the boarded up Benash Delicatessen, the last of Midtown’s Jewish delis, which has been closed since 2018. Benash, like the Wellington, is adorned with red neon signs, a bold celebration of New York nightlife and a promise of something come and gone.

More depressing, perhaps, than the final days of the Wellington’s liquidation sale—even Friday, when basically no one came through while I was there—was a look over its defunct Facebook page. "New York is unquestionably the most exciting city in the world and no place puts visitors in closer p," its bio says, "p" their own. Their photos section is populated with stock photography of the hotel and general "New York City" activities: crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, going to Times Square, hitting up Central Park. One vintage photo of Jimi Hendrix supposedly in the hotel roots the establishment to the 20th century more than its other bland signifiers. Still: the Wellington predates the Plaza, the Algonquin, and the Knickerbocker. But its furniture lives on—packed up, taped, dollied out of the lobby—awaiting a second life.

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