Times Square Hotel

The Times Square Hotel is at 255 West 43rd Street, on the northeast corner with Eighth Avenue, near Times Square in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. The land lot is nearly rectangular and covers , The block of 43rd Street outside the building is co-named in honor of Adolph Ochs, a former publisher of The New York Times, the longtime occupant of the neighboring 229 West 43rd Street. The surrounding area is part of Manhattan's Theater District and contains many Broadway theatres. The hotel is also surrounded by various other apartment, office, industrial, and commercial buildings. == Architecture ==

The Times Square Hotel was designed in a Renaissance-inspired style. drew up plans for the hotel, which was built by developer Henry Claman. 43rd Street On the first two stories, there is a round-arched window beneath each light court. All of these windows contain iron railings at the first story and are flanked by Doric-style pilasters, which support a balustrade with a central shield above the second story. The easternmost wing contains the main entrance, which leads to a recessed vestibule with a set of bronze entrance doors. The vestibule has terrazzo floors, a plaster ceiling, and granite walls; there is a bronze service door and a plaque to the left. East of the entrance was a service gate, as well as a granite storefront leading to the Headline Room, which was added in the early 1950s and removed in 1994. In each bay, there are Renaissance-style spandrel panels made of cast iron above the ground level, while the second floor contains metal casement windows. The window arrangement on the 4th through 15th stories is the same as on the 3rd story. The 4th through 11th floors constitute the hotel's midsection. On these stories, each window has sills and lintels made of terracotta, and each wing is flanked by embossed brick panels. A horizontal belt course, made of terracotta, runs above the 11th floor. There are terracotta panels at each corner of each large window, as well as a terracotta cornice running above the entire 12th story. Additional light courts face east and north but are not visible from the street. Service functions, such as elevators and stairs, were clustered along a "spine" near the north side of the building. The wings on 43rd Street, in turn, extend southward from the spine. was the only major public room that remained intact by the 1990s. The lobby is a double-height, "L"-shaped space that extends to the north and west. The room contains a terrazzo floor with red-and-black decorations on a brown background, as well as pink marble walls with black-marble baseboards. On the eastern wall, two curved staircases with bronze railings lead up to a balcony with cast-iron railing, which in turn is supported by square piers with marble sheathing. The lobby also contains six octagonal piers, which are also sheathed in marble and support the main ceiling. Plasterwork decorations, such as rosettes and moldings, divide the ceiling into panels. There is a marble desk that wraps around the north and west corners of the lobby, as well as a partition to the northwest of the desk, which led to an office space. The west and south walls of the lobby contain windows, which lead respectively to a marble counter and another office. By the 1990s, the hotel's ground level was divided into four storefronts. There are activities rooms on each of the upper stories, including computer rooms, fitness rooms, art studios, and music-rehearsal rooms. The rooms were divided among existing residents, single people with extremely low incomes, and formerly homeless and mentally ill people. About half of the units were designated for low-income adults; these included 96 units of subsidized housing and 130 units of unsubsidized housing for people who earned less than the median income for the New York metropolitan area. The remaining units were allocated to people who formerly lived in homeless shelters. Of these, 50 units were set aside for people with HIV/AIDS, while 200 additional units were set aside for people who had undergone mental-illness treatment. When the renovation was complete, 80 percent of the units had kitchens, and all units had private bathrooms. Units typically covered , excluding bathrooms. ==History==

Development During the late 1910s, developer Henry Claman acquired a site on 43rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, measuring , where he planned to build a movie theater. The site had been partially excavated during World War I, but construction was paused during the war. Architecture firm Gronenberg and Leuchtag was hired to design the hotel, and they filed plans with the New York City Department of Buildings in 1919. Gronenberg and Leuchtag submitted revised plans The project was to cost $1.5 million, while the site was appraised at $1 million. By that November, the exterior was nearly complete, and the developers were preparing model rooms for public inspection. The hotel was completed in April 1923 as the Claman Hotel. The New York Times called it "the finest structure on Eighth Avenue north of the Pennsylvania". Bachelor and tourist hotel 1920s to 1940s The hostelry was originally a bachelor hotel, catering to single men. One source called the Claman Hotel a "pioneer among the many big hotels and apartment hotels that are to follow in the reaches below Central Park". The new owners changed the name to the Times Square Hotel that March, and they set aside one floor for women to attract a wider range of guests. By the mid-1920s, the hotel was profitable; the Times said the hotel "shows, in its success, the wisdom of its projector". In 1929, architect L. Scacchetti is recorded as having filed plans with the Manhattan Bureau of Buildings for alterations to the hotel, although these changes were not immediately carried out. According to the Claman family, which remained involved with the hotel, the Times Square was one of four hotels in New York City that did not record a loss between 1930 and 1935, despite the onset of the Great Depression. The Manger family sold the Times Square Hotel in March 1931 to a syndicate headed by William S. Brown for an estimated $3.5 million. At the time, the hotel was valued at $2.555 million. The rooms were spread across the hotel; although nearly all of the tenants offered to pay their back rent once they had been hired, Brown declined their offers. Henry Claman's son Sidney Claman, Claman announced the next year that the hotel had completed $100,000 worth of renovations, including an air-conditioning system in the restaurant, as well as the merger of several small rooms. By 1940, the hotel's grill room had become a popular venue for musical performances. The hotel remained popular in part because of its proximity to transit, as well as tourist attractions such as nearby Broadway theaters, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, and St. Patrick's Cathedral. The Claman family completed a seven-story parking lot on an adjacent site in 1950, leasing the parking lot to Theodore Sylvan for about $1.5 million a year. Interior design firm Lippincott and Margulies renovated the ground story in 1952, converting an unused portion of the lobby into a bar and restaurant called the Headline Room. The hotel remained popular among tourists, as well as people working at the nearby New York Times headquarters. Harris's group planned to extensively renovate the hotel, which at the time contained 600 rooms. 1960s to early 1980s Arthur Schwebel indicated in February 1962 that he planned to lease the Times Square Hotel for 90 years at a cost of $30 million. At the time, the hotel had 900 rooms, two restaurants, a lounge, a bar, and several retail stores. Schwebel planned to renovate the entire hotel. The next year, Schwebel changed the name of the hotel to the Times Square Motor Hotel. Schwebel said he had added the word "Motor" because of high demand for mid-priced hotels that offered their guests free parking. To attract tourists and deter long-term residents, the hotel's operators renovated the rooms, then raised rents by between 12 and 15 percent. Schwebel's partnership ran the building until 1981. and another incident in 1969 that injured three guests. The hotel gained a reputation for prostitution and drug use during the 1970s. On a sidewalk just outside the hotel, a vent for the New York City steam system attracted encampments of drunk people. In addition, a guest was killed in an explosion in 1980. During that decade, The New York Times described the hotel as a "hell for the homeless", citing its high crime rate and poor physical condition. Welfare hotel Covenant House The nonprofit organization Covenant House agreed in September 1984 to pay $15 million for the hotel. The organization converted three floors into corporate offices and operating the remainder of the building as a hotel. The New York City government used the hotel as a shelter for homeless families, but Covenant House officials said the hotel would continue to serve existing residents. Bruce Ritter, the priest who had founded Covenant House, planned to use the hotel as a youth shelter. The hotel also tried to discourage long-term residents by asking guests to show their passports if they wanted to rent a room. To cover the hotel's financial deficits, Covenant House began operating some rooms as a youth hostel. Starting in April 1987, the American Independent Hostel operated 200 rooms, renting them to students for $14 per night. The hostel's officials offered free rooms to students who helped promote the hostel, and the rooms soon became popular among students. Sale and bankruptcy Ritter placed the hotel for sale in 1987, and Covenant House had identified two potential buyers by November 1987. Covenant House had outbid the city government for the former National Maritime Union Building in Chelsea, Manhattan, that September, and the Koch administration wanted to buy the Times Square Hotel as a result. The city planned to accommodate the hotel's 330 existing residents, many of whom were disabled or elderly. At the end of December 1987, Shortly afterward, city officials tried to acquire the hotel through condemnation. A federal court appointed hotelier Tran Dinh Truong, who also operated the neighboring Hotel Carter. as an interim operator. After officials found peeling lead paint in 18 rooms, the city withheld rent payments for these rooms in December 1988; a city inspector subsequently discovered that nearly a hundred rooms had peeling paint. The Times Square housed 12 homeless families in August 1989, but the rate of relocations increased significantly during the following three months, in part because of an increase in the city's homeless population. The administration of mayor David Dinkins began soliciting proposals for the hotel's future use in 1990. The city originally planned to operate most of the Times Square as a tourist hotel, relocating existing SRO residents to a separate wing. Rosanne Haggerty, director of nonprofit organization Common Ground, subsequently convinced the city to convert the hotel into supportive housing instead. Haggerty called the hotel "a scene of complete social chaos", saying there were 1,700 building code violations. Common Ground planned to convert the hotel to 652 supportive housing apartments. The units would be roughly evenly divided among existing SRO residents; single people with extremely low incomes; and New York City Human Resources Administration (HRA) clients, who included homeless people, as well as those with mental illnesses or AIDS. the principal on the loan amounted to about $14,000 for each room. It was also the largest project to receive financing from the New York City government's SRO Loan Fund. Common Ground officials responded that, since it was a nonprofit organization, Common Ground was not required to pay workers at a rate that had been negotiated by labor unions. The New York State Urban Development Corporation gave Common Ground a $234,050 grant to renovate the storefronts. Afterward, ice-cream company Ben & Jerry's agreed to give Common Ground a franchise for one of the storefronts in 1993; Common Ground also wanted to raise between $12 million and $15 million from private sources. The rooms were rented out for no more than $500 per month, The hotel also operated a welfare-to-work program for residents, and over a hundred residents had obtained full-time jobs by the late 1990s. In addition, the hotel had a 24-hour security patrol, and drug use was banned. The hotel did provide drug addiction recovery groups, By 2000, the Times Square Hotel housed many people with AIDS, as well as formerly homeless residents with drug issues or mental illnesses; many of the hotel's low-income residents were musicians or actors. Several newspapers said that, after Common Ground took over the Times Square Hotel, the neighborhood's rates of homelessness had decreased by 87 percent. British newspaper The Observer reported that very few residents became homeless again. ==See also==