The hotel was host to numerous notable guests, both foreign and domestic, and was, for a time, the most exclusive hotel in the city, and the center of social life for elite New Yorkers.

President Ulysses S. Grant's campaign began at a dinner party in the hotel, and he and his cabinet once held an official session there.
The celebrity lawyer Chester A. Arthur – who later became President of the United States – kept a suite for his office; Edward, Prince of Wales, stayed here on his North American tour, as did his brother-in-law the Duke of Argyll, Dom Pedro of Brazil and Prince Agustín de Iturbide y Green of Mexico, Maximilian's adopted son. "
It was a gathering place for fat cats like Boss Tweed, Jay Gould, Jim Fisk and Commodore Vanderbilt, who would trade stocks here after hours."
The celebrated New York City physician, Dr. John Franklin Gray, lived at the hotel.
When the superbly confident young Jim Fisk first arrived in New York, he stayed at the Fifth Avenue hotel until he was temporarily ruined.
Gore Vidal made the Fifth Avenue Hotel a setting in his novel 1876, for it was in a suite here that John C. Reid, editor of The New York Times woke the Republican National Committee chairman Zachariah Chandler, and worked out the campaign for the controversial Presidential election of 1876.

On May 21, 1881, the United States Tennis Association was founded in the Fifth Avenue Hotel.
The hotel was host to numerous notable guests, both foreign and domestic, and was, for a time, the most exclusive hotel in the city, and the center of social life for elite New Yorkers.
President Ulysses S. Grant's campaign began at a dinner party in the hotel, and he and his cabinet once held an official session there. The celebrity lawyer Chester A. Arthur – who later became President of the United States – kept a suite for his office; Edward, Prince of Wales, stayed here on his North American tour, as did his brother-in-law the Duke of Argyll, Dom Pedro of Brazil and Prince Agustín de Iturbide y Green of Mexico, Maximilian's adopted son. "It was a gathering place for fat cats like Boss Tweed, Jay Gould, Jim Fisk and Commodore Vanderbilt, who would trade stocks here after hours." The celebrated New York City physician, Dr. John Franklin Gray, lived at the hotel. When the superbly confident young Jim Fisk first arrived in New York, he stayed at the Fifth Avenue hotel until he was temporarily ruined. Gore Vidal made the Fifth Avenue Hotel a setting in his novel 1876, for it was in a suite here that John C. Reid, editor of The New York Times woke the Republican National Committee chairman Zachariah Chandler, and worked out the campaign for the controversial Presidential election of 1876.
On May 21, 1881, the United States Tennis Association was founded in the Fifth Avenue Hotel.
Fifth Avenue Hotel