Hotel Carter
The Hotel Carter was a hotel at 250 West 43rd Street, near Times Square, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Opened in June 1930 as the Dixie Hotel, the 25-story structure originally extended from 43rd Street to 42nd Street, although the wing abutting 42nd Street has since been demolished. The hotel originally contained a bus terminal at its ground level, which was closed in 1957, as well as a bar and restaurant immediately above it. The upper stories originally contained 1,000 rooms but were later downsized to 700 rooms.
Hotel Carter
The hotel was developed by the Uris Buildings Corporation, which announced plans for the site in September 1928. The Bowery Savings Bank foreclosed on the hotel in 1931 and acquired it in March 1932, operating it for the next decade. In 1942, the Dixie became part of the Carter Hotels chain, which rehabilitated the hotel several times. The hotel was renamed the Carter in October 1976 in an attempt to rehabilitate its image. The businessman Tran Dinh Truong operated the Carter from 1977 until his death in 2012, after which GF Management took over. The Carter closed in 2014 and was sold to Joseph Chetrit, who planned to renovate the hotel as of 2022.
While it was operating, the Hotel Carter gained a negative reputation due to the crimes that took place there, as well as its general uncleanliness. At least four murders have occurred in the hotel. In addition, the Hotel Carter was cited as being among America's dirtiest hotels for several years in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
History[edit]
Development and foreclosure[edit]
Harris H. Uris, who cofounded the Uris Buildings Corporation with his son Percy, acquired the land lots at 241 West 42nd Street and 250–262 West 43rd Street in September 1928. The acquisition gave the Uris family a site of 16,500 square feet (1,530 m2), on which the family planned to build a 25-story hotel with 700 guestrooms.[4][5] In May 1929, the New York State Title and Mortgage Company gave Percy and his brother Harold a $2.2 million construction loan for the Hotel Dixie.[2][3] Excavation for the new structure began the same month with the removal of six old tenements from the site. Tenements at 250–262 West 43rd Street were razed, along with a two-story taxpayer at 241 West 42nd Street.[25] The Uris brothers acquired a four-story building at 266 West 43rd Street in August 1929.[26][27] This land lot was separated from the hotel's site by another building at 264 West 43rd Street,[a] which belonged to the Schulte family.[26] At the time, work on the hotel's foundations was underway.[27] Several floors of steelwork had been added to the hotel by mid-October 1929.[29]
The Uris brothers leased the storefronts to various businesses, including a laundry,[30] as well as a beauty parlor and barber shop.[31] A concession was also awarded for the hat rack in the Dixie Hotel's lobby. Scarr Transportation Service was hired to managed the bus terminal,[13] and the restaurant space in the terminal was leased to Loft, Inc.[32] Two bus operators began using a temporary bus terminal on the site on December 9, 1929,[33] and group of transportation executives formally dedicated the Dixie Hotel's Central Union Bus Terminal on February 14, 1930.[14][33]
The Dixie Hotel was originally supposed to open on May 1, 1930, and the bus terminal was planned to formally open at the same time.[8][9] That month, M.C. Levine was recorded as having incorporated the Hotel Dixie with 10,000 shares.[34] The Bowery Savings Bank gave a $350,000 mortgage loan the same month to the Jerrold Holding Corporation, a holding company led by Harris Uris, which owned the hotel. This mortgage loan, along with four others on the site, were consolidated into a single lien totaling $1.85 million.[35] The bus terminal formally opened in May 1930.[15] The Hotel Dixie opened the next month, with S. Gregory Taylor as the operator and James M. Tait as the general manager.[36] The Central Union Bus Terminal was known as the Short Line Bus Terminal by July 1931.[37]
Critical reception[edit]
In 1980, a writer for Newsday wrote that the hotel was a "large, un-self-conscious, family-oriented kind of place" with "simple and spotlessly clean" rooms.[113] By the 2000s, media reports frequently criticized the hotel's cleanliness. For example, during July 2009, the Glenn Beck Program highlighted the reports of the filth and disrepair of the Carter Hotel,[114] while USA Today wrote that the hotel was filled with "roaches, rats, black mold and stains of dubious origin".[95]
Despite the many complaints that the Hotel Carter received, the hotel remained popular among some guests, including students, foreigners, and budget tourists. In 2005, The New York Times wrote that the hotel "offers travelers a cheap room in an expensive city, and something more: an adventure".[91] New York magazine wrote in 2014: "If you still want a touch of the vice-ridden Times Square of the '60s and '70s, consider spending a night at the Hotel Carter."[115]
Deaths[edit]
The hotel has recorded several homicides. A 25-day-old infant was beaten to death at the hotel in November 1983; her father, a hotel resident, was charged with murder and child abuse.[116] In 1987, a woman was thrown to her death out of a window from one of the top floors after witnesses heard arguing from room 1604.[117] The hotel's night manager was killed in July 1999 during a brawl near the front desk;[118] a clerk who lived at the hotel was charged with the night manager's murder.[119] In August 2007, a housekeeper found the body of aspiring model Kristine Yitref,[120][121] wrapped in plastic garbage bags and hidden under a bed in room 608; sex offender Clarence Dean was charged with her homicide.[122]