Building of the Week - 27th Ed.

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Freehand Hotel

23 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10010

For those of you who may not know, I have been taking a writing class for the last six weeks! Tomorrow is my last class and I’m going to miss it. I’m hoping to take more classes in the future but for now, I would like to honor it by writing about a building suggested to me by my classmates: the Freehand Hotel!

Way back in the 1920s, this building was made to be the George Washington Hotel. This guy, let’s call him “Harry Barth”, operated a chain of hotels and this was his latest project. Construction started around March 1929, but oh no! What’s that?! The Great Depression. The stock market completely crashed 7 months into construction. Despite this, the construction crew soldiered on and the hotel was completed in 1930. Barth’s company then immediately filed for bankruptcy.

The Depression didn’t stop architects Frank Andrews and John Peterkin from giving this project their all. They fused a 1920s style with Renaissance-period architecture using arches, symmetry, and intricate facades. My favorite aspect of the exterior design is the little cherubs at the top of the arches. I think there is a dangerously low amount of cherubs on the facades of NYC buildings and no one is talking about it!!

My apologies for the side quest I’m about to take us on. This Frank Andrews guy had quite the love life. In 1984, he married Gertrude Reynolds and they had a daughter together. Oh no! Who’s there?! Pauline Frederick. And she’s come to steal your man. She and Frank get married the same year he gets divorced from poor Gertrude and the following year they have a daughter. They only lasted four years before getting divorced. Fun fact about Pauline is that she got married another four times after this! Unlucky in love, as they say. But back to Frank: he then married Ellen Brown in 1927 and had a son & daughter with her. Was getting married free back in the early 1900s?

The first three years of this hotel being open coincided with Prohibition. During that time, the building started to be used as both a brothel and a boot-legging house. Sprinkle a drug raid on top and that brings us up to the 1990s. The hotel was purchased in an auction and space was leased to Educational Housing Services in the mid-1990s. Fast forward again to 2016: the property was purchased and developed into the Freehand Hotel!

So Freehand is actually a chain of hostels with other locations in LA, Chicago, and Miami. The idea of hostels always amazes/frightens me & in a place like New York you’re bound to run into a vast array of humans. Sadly (but probably for the best) the New York location is the only one that does not have shared accommodations.

No corner of this place was neglected when it came to interior design.Roman & Williams, the design firm for the renovation, wanted to keep as many of the original elements of the space as possible. You see how they simply restored the crown molding and wood floors instead of ripping everything out to create a boring ‘modern’ space? Very mindful. Very demure.

There are 395 rooms here and each one has a commissioned mural by various Bard College artists. In the common areas, the walls are covered with artwork - most of which were sourced from local artists and are available for purchase. This place is every hipster's dream. They’ve got fiddle leaf figs, flannel shower curtains, avocado-green tiles, and funky lamps!

Speaking of lamps, Roman & Williams custom-designed every light fixture in the place. If we learned anything about me from last week, I love (a little too much?) good lighting design. The neon sign at the entrance kicks off the warm and exciting vibe you’ll find throughout the entire building.

When designing the hotel, they used the boarding-style floor plan to their advantage. In the smaller rooms, you’ll find a range of setups from two twin beds to four-person bunk rooms. Many of these rooms are under $200 so it’s the perfect place for the young clientele they are hoping to attract.

Throughout the hotel, you can stumble upon five different restaurants, bars, and workspaces. Bar Calico and the Georgia Room provide a casual hangout spot where you can eat New Mexico-inspired dishes under a large disco ball. The Broken Shaker, a rooftop Tiki Bar modeled after the flagship location in Miami, serves tropical drinks and Caribbean-inspired cuisine. On any given day, you’ll find a plethora of vagrants (laudatory) tip-tapping away on their Macbooks from the many free-to-use common areas. What more could you want?

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Fun Facts

• In the 1990s when the building was used for Education Housing, Keith Haring stayed there while attending the School of Visual Arts.

  
  

• So I may have discovered something scandalous. The website and pretty much every article written about this place heavily emphasize that it’s located in the Flatiron District. Umm call me crazy but when you look at this on a map it is literally in Gramercy. Is this some type of ploy to seem more artsy? Is the Flatiron District really that much more “artsy” than Gramercy? Am I losing my mind? Chat, what do you think?

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The summertime is just too dang fun for me to write these on time, okay?! Will you just let me live?? Just remember: you pay zero whole dollars a month for your subscription to this and thus I can do whatever I want. TBH I’m pretty sure only my cousin Margaret noticed I didn’t send on out on Friday.

Anyways… see you next week! Toodaloo!

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