Joshua Stein visits boutique hotel The Jane in New York

It’s been a sailors’ hostel, YMCA, flophouse and even housed survivors of the Titanic. Now set to open as a boutique hotel, The Jane retains its character and low prices, says Joshua Stein.

One hundred and one years ago, New York was in its heyday as a maritime city, and the Far West Village was alive with seamen. Sailors in need of shelter during their shore leave could count on many charitable homes, such as the American Seaman’s Friend Society Sailors’ Home and Institute, to house them cheaply. Overlooking the Hudson River, this five-storey building, complete with beacon, was meant to be a wholesome alternative to spending the night passed out in an alley.

With a steady stream of transients, the hotel flourished. Sailors, lured not only by the 25-cent rooms but also by the library, the swimming pool in the basement and, somewhat doubtfully, the chapel, filled the 208 tiny rooms. According to the New York Times, in 1909, only a year after it had opened, the hotel had 16,000 sailors stop by in February alone. And its biggest claim to fame is that in 1912 the vast brick building put up the few surviving sailors from the Titanic.

A century later, its rooms are going for more than 25 cents a night, although not much more in relative terms. In February the former sailors’ home will officially reopen as perhaps the world’s first boutique budget flophouse, The Jane. Already a few intrepid guests can stay in 50 or so of the Lilliputian rooms, which have already been madeover, amid the bustle and boom of construction. The rooms are still

tiny and still cheap, but quite a bit nicer. Modelled on ships’ cabins, each of the 50 single-berth rooms is a study in style, thrift and efficiency. The single bed sits atop a set of drawers; a brass rail running above a mirrored wall is the wardrobe; the air conditioner is hidden behind a wooden lattice. The internet is wireless, the television screen flat, the bottle of Saratoga spring water complimentary.

There’s one thing missing: a bathroom. Those are at the end of the hall. They’re communal affairs - two showers, two toilet cubicles - but even they are all marble and subway tile, a bobo version of a hobo bathroom. And at $99 a night, bathroom or not, the rooms are still the best deal in the city.

A year ago, The Jane was just another fading New York relic, consigned to either demolition or redevelopment as soulless luxury condos. By the 1940s, competition and the decline in maritime trade had left the Sailors’ Home foundering. In 1944, the YMCA took over operations and removed the beacon, but by the 60s, the Home had become just another fetid flophouse with peeling paint and cast-off souls. The pool was empty and mildewed. The bleak hallways were full of prostitutes and drug addicts who flowed in from the not-yet-gentrified Meatpacking district. Sylvia Iglesias, 56, a sweet, half-Spanish cook who has lived in the hotel with her sister Nellie for more than 15 years, remembers: “It was very ugly for a long time.” For many, the Hotel Riverview, as it was then called, was the last stop before the gutter or the grave.