Carlton Arms Hotel

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5-story hotel completed in 1910. When it opened, it mostly catered to farmers and businessmen who were in the city to conduct business. It later served as a speakeasy during Prohibition and eventually was converted to an SRO-hotel that housed welfare recipients. Over the years, its guests also included drug addicts and prostitutes, and the building fell into disrepair. It wasn’t until the ‘80s when management changed, things started to turn around, and the Carlton Arms began to attract a new type of clientele. All told, more than 150 different artists have contributed their artwork to the Carlton Arms, and the hotel still accepts applications from artists today through an artist-in-residence program, which provides free housing and materials to the artists they select to paint a room.

And said clientele were artists, some of whom were friends of the manager, who offered them work within the hotel. One of these artists painted a mural…and then another joined in…and soon after more artists were invited to leave their mark on the halls and walls of the Carlton Arms thus beginning the transformation into what you see there today, where every wall, door, hallway, and more is covered in art.

The facades are clad in red brick above a white-tiled ground floor with black stone, metal, and glass storefronts at both the east and west ends. The hotel entrance is tucked at the far west end, with a metal-and-glass door below a small awning. The upper floors on the north facade have beige quoins at the east edge, next to a bay of single-windows. Farther east is a bay of smaller windows, and then two bays of single-windows and another of small windows, followed by another vertical band of quoins that separates the west end of the building. There are four bays of large single-windows at the west end. The windows all have stone sills (bracketed at the larger ones), and except for two small window bays, they all also have curved, bracketed stone lintels. A black metal fire escape with basket-style landings runs down the middle of the facade, which is crowned by a black metal roof cornice with console brackets and dentils.

The east facade on the avenue has two storefronts at the ground floor. The upper floors have six bays of single-windows with bracketed stone sills and peaked lintels. There are white stone quoins at the edges and another in the middle dividing the facade in half, including the roof cornice. A fire escape runs down three of the middle bays.

The hotel contains 54 guest rooms. The ground floor is occupied by Fitzgerald's Pub, Dog & Bone bar, Mucha Shaved Tea, and Jimmy's House Asian Noodle Bar.

carltonarms.com/
nyadventureclub.com/gallery/28107828