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WHENEVER SAM Goldstein cruises past Broadway and 73rd Street, heslows down his cab and sneaks a glance at the building on the cornerthat looks like a giant concrete wedding cake. Visions of jewels and furs and dancing denizens sparkle in his memory, and he can still hear the music from the ballroom where he once did the twostep.
"You never saw such a place like this, with all the fancy singers and high-class people that lived here," says a wistful Goldstein, who has been driving a taxi for 33 years.
True, some of the zip is gone, but the Ansonia's reputation as a haven for musicians, opera singers, composers and artists is intact. In fact, anyone wanting to drop a few names from the opera world has still come to the right place. Singers Theresa Stratas, Brent Ellis, Eleanor Steber and Ashley Putnam live in the funky Ansonia, officially known as the Ansonia Hotel, along with opera impresario Matthew Epstein and duo concert pianists John and Richard Contiguglia.
"It's a wonderful place for a musician to live and work, and a real inspiration just to be around other tenants," John Contiguglia said. "The Ansonia is not a hotel, it's a conservatory," added fellow tenant and opera singer Ethel Frumkin.
In its heyday in the early 1900s, the Ansonia played a large role in the New York opera community. In a 1963 edition of Opera World magazine, a historical article noted that getting a room at the Ansonia was a sure sign of impending stardom. "In short, scarcely anyone in the opera business has not, at one time or another, lived in the Ansonia, where residence was regarded as the first step toward success in a precarious and overcrowded field," the magazine reported.
"The Ansonia was the best hotel in New York City; it was the Waldorf-Astoria of its day," said Luigi dell'Orefice, a second-generation Ansonia conductor / composer who has lived in the creamcolored Beaux-Arts building since 1937.
From the day it opened in February, 1903, the Ansonia became popular with European opera singers and musicians who came to town to perform at the Met. The hotel-apartment offered some of the most modern luxuries available, like a plumbing system that gave residents water in...