It’s the quintessential Manhattan hotel, somehow both drab and sleek, an emblem of the gray and glass aesthetic of the city that appears in thousands of beloved Hollywood films and series. The Midtown Hilton — or technically, the New York Hilton Midtown — is one of the city’s largest hotels, and the largest Hilton in the continental United States, with nearly 2,000 rooms.
Nestled inconspicuously on West 54th Street, among the marble towers of Sixth Avenue, not far from the Museum of Modern Art and Rockefeller Center, it has hosted the Emmy Awards, Donald Trump’s victory speech in 2016, Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the journalists who holed up in its rooms with the Pentagon Papers. It has appeared in sitcoms and films, from “Seinfeld” to “Michael Clayton.” And has generally seen history go by since opening its doors in the 1960s, in addition to countless corporate conferences.
And early on Wednesday morning, it became the backdrop for a high-profile killing, when a man gunned down Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, near an entrance, before fleeing on a bicycle.
“Someone got shot outside,” an attendee of a conference was overheard saying on his way upstairs, where people were chatting over cups of coffee before the day’s events began. It seemed like just another day of business-minded mingling in New York.
That someone would turn out to be Mr. Thompson, a head of one of the nation’s largest health insurers, and one of the scheduled speakers at the event, the UnitedHealth Group’s Investor Conference 2024. As attendees gathered, news crews were massing on the street below, the police were searching for the hooded shooter, and, at Mount Sinai West, a hospital just uptown, Mr. Thompson, 50, was dead after sustaining gunshot wounds.
As the news spread, the conference was called off, attendees pulled off their lanyards and headed for the exits, carry-on luggage in tow.
Mark Sanders, the general manager of the New York Hilton Midtown, said in an email that the hotel staff was shaken by the crime. “We are deeply saddened by this morning’s events in the area and our thoughts are with all affected by the tragedy,” he said.
But at the hotel, by necessity, life paused, then went on. A hotel is meant to be calm — this one in particular perhaps, serving if not as an oasis, then a carpeted pocket of quiet against the volume of Midtown, with its coffee carts and taxi cabs, its sidewalks jammed with tourists and men and women walking, head down, in suits. The hotel staff, in its heavily trafficked lobby, projects an aura of having seen it all, and having looked away.
Though yellow police tape closed off a section of West 54th Street just outside a side entrance, hotel guests continued traipsing in and out of the main entrance on Wednesday morning. Natasha Reyes, a cashier at the gift shop, said that she had arrived about an hour before the shooting, and never heard anything at all.
This is probably how it was when other major events were happening around the hotel. When, for example, Mr. Presley, in a baby-blue suit, was giving an interview in a ballroom. Or when Neil Sheehan and his colleagues from The New York Times booked several rooms to compile the story on the leaked government report that would roil the nation with its revelations about the Vietnam War. Or when an engineer from Motorola placed the first call ever made from a handheld cellular phone from the sidewalk outside.
Hotels are meant to absorb whatever happens. If there is conflict or even tragedy, they are just the backdrop.
