Historic Hilltop

This "signature" station celebrates both “old” and “new” Battery Park Hotels, the first destroyed by fire, but both known for their guest lists. A young George Vanderbilt stayed at the original Victorian inn with his widowed mother where he looked out to a sweeping peneplain he would later purchase and call "Biltmore." To construct the new Battery Park Hotel (and the Grove Arcade), E. W. Grove removed the seven-story hill on which the original hotel had stood with coal-powered steam shovels. Artist James Spratt molded Station #11's guestbook.