While leafing through a 1930s Daily News, I came across this ad for single rooms “for transient young men” at the YMCA’s William Sloane House. Intrigued, I did a little research.
Turns out the 1600-room William Sloane Memorial WMCA, built in 1930 down the street from Penn Station, was a clean, safe, popular place for men to live upon first arriving in New York City. Soldiers frequently checked in; a military uniform acted as a free pass to stay in the 14-story building (not that 75 cents a night was going to break the bank back then).
This mid-century postcard of Sloane House comes with a handy neighborhood map.
By the 1980s, the building was mostly empty; in the early 1990s, only 20 percent of its rooms were occupied, mainly by students and tourists traveling on the cheap. The Y closed it for good in 1991. It is now an apartment building.
Tags: Penn Station, Sloane House, YMCA
Ephemeral New York 
June 20, 2008 at 12:56 pm |
sloane house should be preserve for its history…i wrote a blog about my experience at sloane house during late 80’s…
July 16, 2008 at 8:54 pm |
Thanks for this post!
I stayed at the Y a few times in my twenties in 1987, 1988 and 1989.
I don’t remember it being empty by that time. I was wondering what it’d become and there’s your answer…
This was some place! Some people used to call it “Slum House”. I saw a shapely little black rat slide under my door once and disappear under the closet through some mysterious gallery. Being rather absent minded, I also remember taking the stairway to the 14th floor (for it took ages to get a lift) and wondering at how fast it went from 12th to 14th, until I realised that there was no 13th floor “namely” for the sake of superstition.
There was a great mix of people, old, young, ‘transient’ young people like me, people living there, coming from all over the USA and the world. It was a beehive with a lot going on, dance, music, group therapy, people writing, reading, chatting, cruising. I was both horrified by the decay and fascinated by the melancholy; years and decades of endless migrations through the lobby, the floors, the lounges, the stairs, pervaded the atmosphere. Somehow, it was a little bit like being on a big ship for a few days. Seen from a distance (20 years), it retrospectively looks like a Manhattan landmark. It surely put a seal on my first visits to the Big Apple.
July 17, 2008 at 12:59 am |
Thanks for the insider’s view, it’s fascinating.
July 23, 2008 at 5:40 pm |
here is the blog site:
http://lifeatsloanehouse.blogspot.com/
April 11, 2010 at 2:07 am |
Sloane House was where I stayed on my occasional forays to N.Y. when I was a young punk rocker in the late 70’s. $10 rooms, $12 with a sink! Broken glass in the communal shower, used sanitary napkins hanging out windows…When I think back, I was crazy to stay there alone, but alcohol clouded my judgement. But back then, it was my Chelsea Hotel.
July 1, 2010 at 7:36 pm |
I stayed there for a couple days in 1966, when, as a stupid college kid, I’d hitch-hiked to Elizabeth, NJ from Washington DC on a lark. Caught a shuttle from the airport into NYC and somehow found the Sloan House, till my parents could wire me money to get back to school! On a trip to NYC in 2001, I asked a cop on the beat where the place was, and he had no idea what I was talking about! -Too young to remember it, I guess!
August 21, 2010 at 2:07 pm |
[…] After a very quick Google search I learned my little voice was correct! For the reveal click here. NOTE: be sure to check out the comments as they will lead you to a blog written by someone who […]
July 4, 2011 at 5:30 pm |
I lived at Sloane House for about a year in 1977-78, while I took a year off from college. For a 20-year-old country boy like me, it was a wild, sexy place, and a crash course in the New York demimonde of the time. We are living in a very, very different city now.
December 6, 2013 at 12:24 am |
I arrived in NYC in 2/68 and checked into Hotel New Yorker, then a little bit down on its luck. But I needed something cheaper and went to Sloane, which was dirt cheap and had a good cafeteria. The gay scene there was great and pervasive. Lots of hallway cruising; if you wanted to be visited by a cruiser, you left your door ajar. Rampant sexua activity in the communal showers. The place was usually fully occupied. I did find an apartment, and lived in Manhattan for the next 38 years. Ah, youth!
October 27, 2014 at 8:21 am |
[…] The first YMCA opened in 1852 in Manhattan (the mission was to “provide young men new to the city a Christian alternative to the attractions of city life”), and since then, the Y has been an integral part of New York City. […]
June 13, 2015 at 7:40 pm |
1852 mission to provide young men a Christian alternative is ironical when I read the torrid descriptions above. My husband off a 3 year army duty waited for my arrival from France on June 12-61. My ship sailed to NY City and the YMCA holds some fond memories for me
. Hoping 61 still had some young Christian men then.
April 14, 2018 at 1:37 pm |
I stayed here in ’69…my first visit to NYC. Rooms were $6! Paid $35 to fly stand-by on Nortwest Orient. Hair was the top musical and I saw Promise’s Promise’s with Jerry Orbach and Hello Dolly with Pearl Bailey! Rockettes were free with a movie then. I saw John Wayne in True Grit there at Radio City Music Hall. Everything was cheap then; hot dogs 25 cents; subway 10 cents; theater was on twofers. First time I had a Gyro 75 cents! Mama Leone’s was a great Italian restaurant in times square…Oh the memories!
February 11, 2023 at 4:33 am |
Oh my god! Thank you so much for bringing back memories. I am from germany and took a 4 week Delta-Air standby tour 1988 thru USA in the age of 19 after finishing school with a friend. We had no idea where to stay when we arrived at JFK – just a big blue YMCA book with addresses of YMCAs all over the US. We ended up in the Sloane House and it was kind of a shock to us. During night times it happened that people were strolling thru corridors beating on every door. We locked it and saw several times how the doorknob was turned from outside. HORRIFYING but unforgetable – the moment in the central bathroom where we took a shower and two older gay guys tried to get “in touch” with us. I have seen more YMCAs on this tour but none was as fucked up as this place but New York was a dangerous place in general back in the 80s – we saw people gathering around burning oildrums every evening in the center of NY.