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Many memories from this hotel as a teen visiting NYC for the first time. Splitting a room with people I'd only met online. Meeting Jello Biafra in the lobby. Volunteering for HOPE. Trying out a Segway for the first time on a level with floor-to-ceiling windows. Standing on the roof with friends, taking in the city skyline, glancing over at the open login of the NT4.0 Workstation running the elevator motor controls. Walking the back passageways, inspecting ancient NYTel/NYNEX cross boxes, taking the giant service elevators up and down, walking through the abandoned floors covered in dust.
When I came back as an adult, this hotel was the cheapest room in the city, and it showed. Run down and falling apart. It's extremely hard to turn a profit on a hotel this large; the maintenance is constant and expensive, and if you skimp on anything (like shuttering a few floors) they just get worse over time. There was absolutely a time when it was a money maker, but that time is gone. I just wish they could have converted it into apartments. It would have taken a big investment, but I think the city owed it to both the building's history, and the people trying to "make it" in the big apple.
I stayed here in approximately 2010, because it was the cheapest hotel near Madison Square Garden, and I will forever remember it as the filthiest hotel I've ever been in. I slept fully clothed on top of the bed with my coat for a blanket.
I too stayed there in 2010 to be close to MSG. My friends and I knew it was a shithole, and were sending each other terrible TripAdvisor reviews for laughs. Buried a dozen pages in, one review offered instructions for getting up on the roof- go to a certain floor, go into a certain housekeeping door, and take the stairs in the back. We followed the instructions and found an incredible and private view of the city. Fun night!
I also stayed there around the same time; my overriding memory is how grimy the bathroom was. It looked like it had never had a proper clean since it was first decorated.
Living on SEO from their history... PEnnsylvania 6-5000
Before that (1919-1930), it was PENnsylvania 5000.
Did anyone else ever explore the huge multi-level basements of the hotel? In the final sub-basement, I remember there was a passageway that connected into one of the subway tunnels way down there.
Like the Fairmont Toronto has
RIP. I stayed here the first time I visited NYC, mainly on account of the location and price. It felt enormous and check-in was pretty chaotic given the amount of people checking in but it felt like an authentic intro to the city.
That said, it was pretty grimy. Don't blame them for tearing it down, it's way too big to preserve as some kind of historical boutique hotel.
I know this place as the namesake and longtime hosting location of the HOPE Conference. I will forever remember it.
Had the misfortune of tech directing a conference in a ballroom there once. The distro was literally 3-phase cams coming through a hole busted in the drywall, patched into a residential-style breaker panel which was strapped to a furniture dolly with romex as the ‘strap’ and leaned against the wall, front of house, in the ballroom. You can imagine how the rest of the tech was. Worst gig of my life.
Yep, I stayed there in 2000 to attend HOPE 2000. Traveled with Sir Dystic, Lumi and some other cDc kids. Parties were fun. cDc put on a great show.
Here's a two-hour session of HOPE attendees telling stories about crazy things that happened there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46Tofimmga8
HOPE 2000 was a blast, but the place was already a wreck, even by then. Pity to see it go instead of being properly renovated.
That was a great conference. HOPE filled the space nicely. It was a good match.
I remember at HOPE when the lobby flooded from a downpour. Felt it was odd considering how many floors it had. Gross place at it's state but so much damn history.
Fun to learn that the hotel and phone number inspired the movie Transylvania 6-5000!
People are always fretting over the low availability and high cost of housing, yet here's a building with 2200 rooms and all the infrastructure needed to service them. It's all so tiresome.
Hotel rooms are not apartments. The lack of kitchen facilities in particular makes them incompatible with long stays, and you can't just retrofit ranges and ventilation and sinks etc into already small rooms.
Every discussion like this people people assume the challenges of converting old buildings are insurmountable and throw up their hands. Nobody living in a tent or car has ever said 'of course I'd like a warm room with a bed but not at the price of altering the building code or compromising on anything.'
Will you pay for the conversion ? Who would ?
I would like for some of my taxes to be used on such conversions. I already help out some homeless neighbors but my personal capacity is limited. I much prefer my taxes go to this end than buying more paramilitary equipment for cops or vanity development projects.
If the rooms are too small, that's one thing, but there's already plumbing for water, and adding a microwave and induction hotplate isn't too difficult. Sure, it wouldn't be as nice as a full kitchen, but it's serviceable living space. I'd rather that than a tent on the street which would have an even worse kitchen setup, although it might have more space.
> lack of kitchen facilities in particular
Do you need a kitchen in central NY? Those that can afford the location can also afford to eat out?
It’s more a matter of code. In most (all?) of the country, to be classified as housing you have to have a kitchen.
Absent of building code, it’s pretty disparaging to dismiss kitchen facilities in a permanent dwelling because someone might be able to afford eating out everyday in perpetuity.
Well, this is what Vornado plans to do to the neighborhood:
https://books.vno.com/books/kpoe/#p=1
It doesn't look like a neoclassical SRO is going to fit in there.
Lots or spaces could be converted to housing but there are other plans in mind; plans that make thick profits will always win over helping people people.
Lobbyists ?
I mean they’re going to replace it with a much larger building. What are you complaining about exactly?
Few of the "much larger building"s going up recently in NYC are high-density, affordable living space.
Few new cars are highly affordable.
We need a continuous supply of new housing, or rebuilding, and in particular NYC should always be building up up up.
There are three ways to deal with shortages: waiting lists, market pricing out the lowest incomes, and building enough new housing to let everyone who wants to live there live their. Only the last option, build build build, is the least bit fair. Every other option is exclusionary and destructive to community.
Why do we need affordable living space in NYC? You know what’s got affordable housing: Iowa.
Randian fantasies aside, cities rely on quite a bit of low-paid labor. Those folks tend to have to live somewhere.
You've really internalized the 'I've got mine, FU' trope over time.
Literally no part of the building being discussed has ever contained housing for NYC residents.
The post upthread proposed changing that, yes?
Among the odder moments came when a government bacteriologist named Frank Olson plunged to his death from the 10th floor in 1953.
It was later revealed that he had been slipped LSD as part of an illegal mind-control program overseen by the C.I.A. Seventy years later, the circumstances remain murky.
I live in the most [ADJECTIVE] country anywhere.
IIRC Ted Kazinsky was part of a similar or same program -mind control ultra.
It was an aggressive researcher's interrogation program consisting of constant belittlement. :( Ted was young at Harvard and probably didnt have the wherewithall to refuse or understand what the effects could be.
Subject of a mini-series dramatization by Errol Morris