The building sits between 81st and 82nd St. on Columbus Avenue in New York City's Upper West Side diagonal from the American Museum of Natural History.

The Hotel was built of Roman brick and terra cotta and boasted many modern marvels of its day including steam heat, lighting by its own electric plant, and good ventilation.

Outside, the platforms of the Ninth Avenue El's 81st Street station ran by the hotel's third floor windows.

In 1893, soon after opening, the hotel's chambermaids and pantry girls threatened a strike when a non-union "colored waiter" took the place of a union striker.

[4] In 1897, there was an explosion at the hotel when Charles E. Tripler, a chemist and inventor, was exhibiting a "secret fluid compound" made of nitrogen and oxygen to some friends.

In May, a "mentally unbalanced" forty-year-old woman dropped from one of the hotel's sixth story rooms and died shortly afterward.

In late 1911, the executors of the Marshall O. Roberts estate brought suit against the hotels owners, who at the time included John D Rockefeller, to secure two mortgages made to Charles Fuller for $650,000.

[15] When the depression hit in 1929, the neighborhood began to spiral downward and the hotel gradually fell into disrepair.

It also likely served as the headquarters for the Moe and Shim Syndicate, an alleged liquor ring during the age of prohibition that distributed more than 650,000 gallons of alcohol.

[19] Described by one neighbor as "a scene from Calcutta," scores of desperate people could be seen drinking, fighting, and screaming with prostitutes roaming up and down the metal stairways selling themselves.

The sole highlight was that it played host to the American rock band, the New York Dolls' first public performance around Christmastime 1971.

Workers at the hotel were organizing a party for the residents; they heard the Dolls jamming across the street and asked if they'd play in exchange for free food.

[21] By the late 1970s, the neighborhood had begun to recover and gentrification hit several upper west side buildings including the Endicott Hotel.

[23] Peter Salwen in his book Upper West Side Story wrote that “By 1983, even the Endicott Hotel had been emptied, fumigated and converted to expensive co-ops.”[24] The newly revived building included ground floor shops with wood facades including the Penny Whistle Toys Shop, Salou (a custom florist), and Endicott Book Sellers.

[25] In November 1982, movie mogul Dino De Laurentiis turned the restored Palm Court into DDL Foodshow, a specialty food shop.

On a 34-foot marble counter, De Laurentiis served countless varieties of cheeses, breads, salads, even a suckling pig or two.

By April 1984, DDL Foodshow had succumbed, along with many neighbors, to what the Times then called “one of the biggest retailing busts in recent memory.”[21] After several other unsuccessful attempts, the space became what is now the Milling Room, with Executive Chef Scott Bryan (formerly of Veritas).