For 5 Cents A Night

—219-21 Bowery —

By 1890, it was estimated that 9,000 homeless men, many of them alcoholics or gambling addicts, found lodging in Bowery flophouses. Accommodations could be a person-sized spot to flop on a wooden floor in a large open ward for 5 cents or a wooden cubicle about four feet by seven for 15 cents.
Nathaniel H. Lyons founded the Lyons Hotel Co. which came to own at least twenty lodging houses including the purpose-built Alabama Hotel constructed in 1889. The architect was James E. Ware (1846-1918), most noteworthy for developing the dumbbell plan, a housing reform design that slightly improved upon the light and air reaching interior rooms of tenement apartments.
The eclectic style of the brick and stone façade displays both Renaissance Revival and Queen Anne features, including central projecting bays with decorative panels and pilasters at the second and third stories and the fifth floor arcade. A lodging house for 77 years, the upper stories were converted to artist's lofts in 1966.
-Mitchell Grubler, Landmarks Committee Chair, Bowery Alliance of Neighbors

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