The Sunshine Hotel was a

flophouse A flophouse (American English) or doss-house (British English) is a place that has very low-cost lodging, providing space to sleep and minimal amenities. Characteristics Historically, flophouses, or British "doss-houses", have been used for ove ...

( single room occupancy hotel) at 245

Bowery The Bowery () is a street and neighbourhood, neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City, New York. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row (Manhattan), Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th ...

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. It received media attention in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a result of numerous radio and film documentaries about the hotel. The Sunshine Hotel has gradually been reduced in size with parts being converted into restaurant and office space.

Description

Originally, the Sunshine Hotel occupied the internally connected upper floors of 241, 243 and 245 Bowery, labeled Sunshine, Lakewood and Annex respectively. The lobby was located on the second floor of 241 Bowery. The Lakewood had 45 cubicles, the Sunshine 100, and the Annex 36 with three barracks-like dormitories. The walkup is now at 245 Bowery. Each

cubicle A cubicle is a partially enclosed office workspace that is separated from neighboring workspaces by partitions that are usually tall. Its purpose is to isolate office workers and managers from the sights and noises of an open workspace so that ...

is on the sides and tall with a chicken-wire ceiling. The only amenities are a bed, a locker and a light-bulb. When the hotel opened in the 1920s, guests could stay for 10 cents () a night. By 1998, its rates were $10 a night. As of 2004, The Sunshine no longer accepted new occupants.

History

241 Bowery was originally an office for the

New York and Harlem Rail Company The New York and Harlem Railroad (now the Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line) was one of the first railroads in the United States, and was the world's first street railway. Designed by John Stephenson (coachbuilder), John Stephenson, it was opene ...

in the 1830s. In the late 1870s it was the location of the saloon and brothel Sultan Divin, and in 1910 the Fleabag saloon took over. By the early 1920s, the address was a pickle factory. In 1922 Frank Mazzara, a broom-maker, followed his brother-in-law Mike Gatto of the Andrews Hotel, into the lodging business by purchasing the location and opening the Sunshine Hotel. Mazzara reworked the façade in the styles of

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

and

Commercial Commercial may refer to: * (adjective for) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and services ** (adjective for) trade, the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information or money * a dose of advertising ...

. This façade had pale yellow bricks, limestone pediments and panels, and plaques with wreath and torch emblems. Mazarra's son Carl took over the Sunshine Hotel in 1946. In 1949, the New York branch of the

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du&nbs ...

investigated Bowery hotels and found that the Sunshine Hotel was discriminating against black people by refusing them service. In 1970 James Adair, the hotel manager at the time, refused to sell cigarettes to a man and was then shot to death on the hotel's second floor. Carl retired in 1984 and sold the hotel to the Bari family, who were in the restaurant supply business, who used part of the hotel to store their business's pizza ovens. By 1998, the Sunshine Hotel accommodated about 125 residents. The flophouse received attention after being featured in an

NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...

segment created by David Isay. In 2001 Michael Dominic released an award-winning documentary ''Sunshine Hotel''. Both Isay's and Dominic's documentaries were narrated by the 16-year manager of the Sunshine Hotel, Nathan Smith, who died of cancer in 2002. In August 2004 Anton Bari, the owner of the Sunshine Hotel, started buying out residents and refusing new guests. At this time, the flophouse had about 44 guests. By 2008, the Sunshine Hotel had fewer than 30 residents. On June 30, 2008, the

New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development The Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) is the department of the government of New York City responsible for developing and maintaining the city's stock of affordable housing. Its regulations are compiled in title 28 of the '' ...

ruled that the hotel was harassing tenants to force them out. The city government gave the hotel three more years before developers could use the location. The Sunshine Hotel lost its plywood signage in 2011 as workers converted the first floor of one of the hotel's three buildings into the Bowery Diner. In August 2014, Roseann Carone of Harlen Sales started converting the building's two upper floors into offices. Meanwhile, the 30 to 40 Sunshine Hotel residents stayed in neighboring 239 Bowery. In June 2017, Carone reapplied for a "Certificate of No Harassment" to protect the hotel's lawful residents from harassment. 245's lower floor lay dormant from 2019 when Cara closed, up into 2022 when the Manhattan bar chain Veloce applied to expand into this space. During all these developments residents still lived upstairs in 245 despite 18 years without new admissions. Bar Veloce is a significant end to the Sunshine's story as it marks the building's transition from squalid flop house to style cocktail bar as the Bowery became gentrified in the first quarter of the 21st century.

Media coverage and art

Film documentaries

2001 Feature Documentary

Filmmaker Michael Dominic made the multi-award-winning and critically acclaimed feature documentary, ''Sunshine Hotel''. Dominic worked on the Bowery and knew several residents of the flophouses. He became interested in making a documentary about the Sunshine and its residents. He began filming in 1999 and the completed film was released in 2001. Sunshine Hotel was his first documentary. It was released on Amazon Prime Video in 2012. Sunshine Hotel has a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and received numerous nominations and awards at film festivals. It also had a two-year run on Sundance Channel Andrea Chase praised the film's cinematography and structure, writing that the film "offers a unsparing look at what it means to hit bottom and stay there." Josh Ralke also gave the film a positive review, praising how it captures the lives of the hotel's residents.

2000 student film

Phil Bertelsen created a 30-minute documentary student film titled ''The Sunshine'' in 2000 which follows some residents and workers for the Sunshine Hotel. It won awards for best short documentary at the 2000

Woodstock Film Festival The Woodstock Film Festival is an American film festival launched in 2000 by filmmakers Meira Blaustein and Laurent Rejto in the Hudson Valley region of New York. The festival takes place each fall in the towns of Woodstock, Rosendale and Saug ...

and at the 2000 Shorts International Film Festival. Bertelsen was given the prize for "Best Black Student Filmmaker" at the 2002 DGA East Coast Student Film Awards for his work on this film.

Radio

David Isay and Stacy Abramson spent a year creating an ''

All Things Considered ''All Things Considered'' (''ATC'') is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio (NPR). It was the first news program on NPR, premiering on May 3, 1971. It is broadcast live on NPR affiliated stations in the United ...

'' segment on the Sunshine Hotel which aired on September 18, 1998. Isay edited 70 hours of raw tape to less than half an hour. Isay and Abramson then collaborated with photographer Harvey Wang to write a book about life in various Bowery flophouses, including the Sunshine Hotel. The program won a

Prix Italia The Prix Italia is an international television, radio-broadcasting and web award. It was established in 1948 by RAI – Radiotelevisione Italiana (in 1948, RAI had the denomination RAI – Radio Audizioni Italiane) in Capri and is honoured with th ...

award in 1999 under the factual documentary category. The documentary was included in an episode of the radio show ''

99% Invisible ''99% Invisible'' is a radio show and podcast produced and created by Roman Mars that focuses on design. It began as a collaborative project between San Francisco public radio station KALW and the American Institute of Architects in San Franc ...

'' which aired on August 4, 2015. Miles Maguire compared the documentary's narrative to

Dante Dante Alighieri (; most likely baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri; – September 14, 1321), widely known mononymously as Dante, was an Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer, and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called ...

's '' Inferno'', where the hotel manager Nathan Smith takes the role of

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; 15 October 70 BC21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet of the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan period. He composed three of the most fa ...

as tour guide and narrator; and the guests represent various personality disorders.

Art

Around July 2004, the artist Julianne Swartz created an art installation titled "Can You Hear Me?" that used a yellow PVC tube to connect the second floor of the Sunshine Hotel to a platform on the sidewalk. The tube had mirrors which pedestrians could look through and interact with Sunshine Hotel residents. This project was part of an exhibition designed to explore the diversity of the Bowery and was done in anticipation of the future opening of the

New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum at 235 Bowery, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-nam ...

. Sunshine Hotel residents had mixed feelings regarding the project; some enjoyed the interactions with outsiders while others were uninterested. On August 19, 2016, the Philadelphia songwriters Sam Cook-Parrott and Michael Cantor released the album ''The Afterglows'' with the third track titled "Angels In The Sunshine Hotel". This song was inspired by the story of a man who moved to New York to study philosophy, but ultimately went broke and became a Sunshine Hotel tenant.

References

External links

NPR documentary transcript
on SoundPortraits.org * * {{IMDb title, 0292261, Sunshine Hotel, (2001 film) 1922 establishments in New York City Hotels established in 1922 Hotels in Manhattan Bowery