Hotel Hermitage - New York

This hotel could hardly look more drab and uninviting, except for the advertisement painted on the side of the building promising single rooms for $1.50 and double rooms for $2.50. For less than $250, you could have rented the entire hotel for your private party. Another interesting and typical feature of this postcard is that the surrounding buildings are obscured. In black-and-white photographs this may have seemed necessary to guide the viewer's eye to the intended focus. Still, I don't think it makes the hotel appear in the best light. I think we need some bright colors here.

Although there is no date on this card, the grayed out marquis on the neighboring movie theater is screening A Woman Rebels, starring Katherine Hepburn, a film that came out in 1936.