The top story initially contained a 17-room suite for New York Central Railroad director Harold Stirling Vanderbilt.

[11] The hotel building is arranged in the shape of the letter "H", with light courts facing north and south, allowing the ground-story spaces to be illuminated by skylights.

[9][12] The rest of the hotel's facade was designed in the Italian Renaissance style and was made of light-colored brick, interspersed with architectural terracotta trim.

[15] Two marble columns in the lobby supported a ceiling with a Tiffany glass skylight,[14][16] directly below the southern light court.

[13] This dining room could fit 300 people and was designed in a manner reminiscent of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate.

[14][25] One of the dining suites evoked the Baltimore Room in the Met Fifth Avenue's American wing and could be reached by a private entrance.

[21] The rooms were also designed with motifs from the original hotel; these details even extended to the door handle plates, which contained eagle medallions.

[42] The New York Central's vice president William J. Wilgus proposed electrifying the line and building a new electric-train terminal underground,[43] a plan that was implemented almost in its entirety.

[51] A 1920 New York Times article said, "With its hotels, office buildings, apartments and underground Streets it not only is a wonderful railroad terminal, but also a great civic centre.

[54] The New York State Realty and Terminal Company, a division of the New York Central Railroad, leased this parcel in January 1925 to a syndicate headed by architect Eliot Cross and businessman William Seward Webb Jr.[6][7] The syndicate, known as the Barclay Park Corporation,[3] planned to construct a 600-unit apartment house above the railroad tracks there, with one to three rooms per unit.

[64] The Barclay started to receive power from hydraulic plants in Grand Central Terminal's basement in 1931,[65] and the hotel began serving alcoholic beverages for the first time in late 1933, after a Prohibition-era ban had been repealed.

[97][98] The buildings were placed for sale at an auction in October 1971, and Kalikow Realty made a low bid of $12.56 million for the hotel.

[100] Penn Central's trustees announced plans in August 1972 to sell the 802-room Barclay to Western International Hotels, a subsidiary of United Air Lines, for $21.8 million, subject to approval from a federal district court.

[103] The court rejected the proposed sale to Western International in early 1973 because of discrepancies in the hotel's appraised value, as well as the fact that Helmsley-Spear had made a $23 million offer for the Barclay.

[120][121] InterContinental received a $37 million loan from the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company in late 1979,[120][121] and the chain began refurbishing the hotel.

[33] Other advertisements featured the bird cage in the lobby, as well as the new public rooms on the third floor, which included a new restaurant called La Recolte.

[33][126] The renovation occurred in spite of increasing land values; the Baltimore Sun estimated in 1984 that the site's valuation "dictates 30- and 40-story prestige office buildings rather than hotels".

[127] The hotel's managers announced in 1986 that they would close the La Recolte restaurant permanently to make way for a reception room for the ballroom.

[131] Seiji Tsutsumi's Saison Group acquired the hotels in the InterContinental chain, including the former Barclay, in October 1988,[132] amid a decline in tourism in New York City.

[134] Around the same time, the United States Department of Justice investigated complaints that the hotel violated the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

[142] By the mid-2000s, about 70 percent of the hotel's guests were Americans; business travelers frequented the Barclay during weekdays, while tourists commonly stayed there during the weekend.

[59][146] After failing to find a buyer for the hotel, IHG withdrew its offer to sell the Barclay in 2013 and began renovating the property.

[60][158] The Barclay's first residents also included businessman Walter W. Law, politician William Henry Barnum,[60] and actor Charles Ray.

[159] During the mid-20th century, the hotel's residents included exiled Russian prince Nicholas Engalitcheff,[160] composer Amy Beach,[161] and producer James Kevin McGuinness.

[163] In later years, Bette Davis, Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, Marlon Brando, Jimmy Durante, Debbie Reynolds, Ernest Hemingway and David O. Selznick all lived at the Barclay.

[164] Caswell-Massey, the oldest chemist and perfumer in the United States, was one of the first tenants to lease space in the Barclay in June 1926,[165] operating its flagship store there for decades.

[32] When the hotel opened, Helen Bishop of Arts & Decoration wrote that the Barclay was "an individual residence of restrained luxury in the mellow manner of the late 18th century, done on a larger scale.

"[172] Bishop particularly praised the hotel's architectural style, saying: "Among New York's recent beautiful buildings of this nature, not one tells such a vivid and fascinating story of Colonial days as the Barclay.

"[173] In a book published in 1932, W. Parker Chase wrote that the Barclay "caters only to the most refined, offering luxury of seclusiveness in a section of the city where New York is smartest, gayest and busiest – where there is the comforting preassurance of the prestige of one's fellow guests".

"[16] Writing in 2006, a critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch praised the physical facilities and the doorman service but lamented the small bathrooms and the fact that the lobby's bird cage had been removed.