Hotel Times Square

I guess that Hotel Times Square has a better ring to it than Hotel Claman, but it's not nearly as distinctive. I appreciate that the sender of this card marked the room where he stayed though.

This was a new hotel when the sender stayed here in 1925, but years later it became a welfare hotel. In 1922, The New York Times reported that the hotel was to be built at a cost of $1,500,000 and would provide accommodations for 'men only' for a proposed price of $9-$14 per week.  It is currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is rented as efficiency apartments, but for a lot more than $9-$14 per week.

I wonder if the recipient of the card, Frank Yates, was the famous sculler from Cornell.

The message reads:
Hello Dick, Am spending a couple of Red Hot weeks down here making some water grant surveys. made one at Poughkeepsie last week + have some on L. I this week. took a boat trip down to Atlantic Highlands N.J. today trying to cool off but didn't have any chills on the water. This is the hotel where I am staying + have fine accommodations. Regards to the boys HSB (?)

The Broadway Central Hotel

Here it is - the only medium-priced hotel on Broadway. Only $1.00 per night for the European Plan and $2.50 per night for the American Plan. What's the difference? Well, the European Plan includes accommodations only, and the American Plan includes three meals per day. I'll take the European Plan, thank you. It's hard to imagine having enough time to explore the city if you always have to be back at the hotel for lunch and dinner.

This hotel, located at 673 Broadway, was originally known as the Grand Central Hotel. With 630 rooms, it was considered huge at the time. The Broadway Central, designed by Henry Engelbert, was opened in 1870.  An enormous sum was spent on luxurious furniture, carpets, and furnishings.

Over the years, the flavor of the hotel changed. In the 1950s, Bill Haley and the Comets played there nightly, and by the 1970s it had become a welfare hotel, charging $5 per night. By then, the building, plagued with rats, prostitutes, and garbage, was considered a public nuisance.  Illegal alterations probably led to the 1973 collapse of the hotel, which killed four residents. Check out Tom Miller's blog for more information on the history of the hotel.

Sadly, this postcard was never sent. I love reading the messages on these old cards, especially if they say what they did during the day and mark the window of the room they stayed in. No such luck this time.

SS Tenyo Maru

The SS Tenyo Maru was a Japanese passenger liner built in 1908. At that time it was the heaviest ship launched in Japan or in the Pacific Ocean. As far as I can tell, this is the first of three ships named the Tenyo Maru. There was another passenger liner that was eventually requisitioned for World War II, and there was (is) also a fishing vessel of the same name that was involved in a nasty oil spill.

The Ships list. com has this to say about the Tenyo Maru:
13,454 gross tons, length 558ft x beam 61.9ft, two funnels, two masts, triple screw, speed 20 knots, accommodation for 275-1st, 54-2nd and 800-3rd class passengers. Built 1908 by Mitsubishi Dockyard & Eng. Works, Nagasaki for Toyo Kisen K.K., Tokyo and used on Hong Kong - Yokohama - San Francisco passenger services. In 1926 the company became Nippon Yusen K.K., Tokyo. 1930 laid up, 1933 scrapped in Japan.
 
This postcard shows the reading room with its amazing furnishings. The ship is initially reported to have had a room where Chinese passengers could go to smoke opium. There must have been a limit to the amount though. Other reports I have seen (including one in the Overland Monthly, Volume 58, 1911) refer to opium being seized in searches of ocean liners coming from the Orient. In one seizure in 1911, eighty tins of opium were taken from the Tenyo Maru.

Source

My favorite story is from Time Magazine, 1929, which details the plight of Mrs. Sui'e Ying Kao, wife of the Chinese Vice Consul at San Francisco, who imported a large quantity of opium on the Tenyo Maru, thinking that she had diplomatic immunity. Alas, the customs agents disagreed. They confiscated $600,000 worth of opium (1929 prices!) from Mrs. Kao. In any case, the reading room shown above seems like the perfect place for smoking opium.


Here's the back of the card.