Hotel Beacon, Residential hotel in Upper West Side Manhattan, US

Hotel Beacon is a 24-story Beaux-Arts building at 2130 Broadway, on the corner of 75th Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side, designed by Walter W. Ahlschlager and built in 1928 on the site of the Tilden Club House and the Dakota Stables. Its apartments opened with one to three bedrooms, each with bath and kitchenette fitted with silent electric refrigeration, and the setbacks carried rooftop gardens.

The building went up in 1928 on a site previously occupied by the Tilden Club House and the Dakota Stables. It was part of a broader wave of construction that changed the character of this stretch of Broadway during the early 20th century.

The hotel's name comes from the airway beacon installed on its roof in 1928, a five-foot-wide light of 1.2 billion candles that could be seen from 70 miles away by planes. The beacon was lit by transatlantic flier Clarence D. Chamberlin on July 12, 1928, and went dark in 1931 after the Department of Commerce restricted white lights to official airway beacons. As of 2017, the hotel still hosts a few permanent tenants alongside 278 transient rooms.

The hotel sits in a lively part of the Upper West Side, with grocery stores, cafes, and restaurants all within easy walking distance. Several subway lines stop nearby, so getting around the rest of Manhattan from here is straightforward.

The building takes its name from an aviation beacon that was once placed on its roof to help guide aircraft during the early days of commercial flying. That beacon was considered more powerful than similar devices on other buildings in the area at the time.