classes. Between 1880 and 1885, more than ninety apartment buildings were developed in the city. Apartment hotels in New York City became more popular after World War I, particularly among wealthy people who wanted to live luxuriously but also wanted to do some of their own housework, such as cooking. Developers of apartment hotels sometimes constructed developments to bypass the Tenement House Law, which prevented new apartment buildings from being taller than 150 percent of the width of the adjacent street. Apartment hotels had less stringent regulations on sunlight, ventilation, and emergency stairs but had to contain communal spaces like dining rooms. Development The International Sporting Club (ISC) had announced plans in December 1919 for a sporting arena and clubhouse at the southeast corner of 49th Street and Lexington Avenue. The existing buildings on the site had been demolished by 1921, when the ISC's founder disappeared with a large proportion of the club's assets. Subsequently, in January 1922, a judge scheduled an auction for the site, and James T. Lee acquired the plot the same month. Lee initially planned to develop a 15-story apartment hotel for men on the ISC site. The Shelton Holding Corporation, headed by Lee, announced in March 1922 that it would build a 30-story apartment hotel instead. The hotel was to be known as the Shelton Club and was one of several hotels in New York City being developed at the time with a combined 6,000 rooms. Lee intended for the Shelton to be a high-end apartment hotel, describing it as "equal in appointments to the Yale Club" building at 50 Vanderbilt Avenue. Residents would rent the apartments monthly, rather than staying overnight or signing long-term leases. Work on clearing the site had started by May 1922, after S. W. Straus & Co. placed a $4 million bond issue on the hotel. Harmon filed plans for a 31-story hotel on the site later the same month at an estimated cost of $3 million to $5 million. Lee wanted to offset the hotel's relatively high construction costs by increasing the building's height, which in turn would allow him to rent the apartments to more people. Furthermore, the higher construction costs of the top stories would be counterbalanced by the high rents that the upper-floor apartments would attract. According to Architecture magazine, the utility costs for a 1,200-room hotel were only slightly higher than those for a 600-room