Life at Sloane House YMCA

2006-04-22

My Sloane House Family-Members of Hospitality Center

There were many young students working at the Hospitality Center when I arrived at Sloane House. Most of them were college kids from Europe. They wanted to spend the summer in New York City and working at Sloane House was the best way to do it. After the summer, they all went home. So it was just Gina, Sonya, Liz and I. Gina came from Mexico, Sonya and Liz were French. We became close friends. There was no choice for us. We were family to each other in this new land. Sloane House itself was a new world to all of us. Gina lived just next door to me. With naturally curly hair and a pair of eyes as big as the moon rimmed with a dark eye liner, she was a passionate, hot-blooded Latin girl. She was very sisterly and always watching over me, making sure I would not get myself in trouble and I trusted her with everything. From the very beginning, she was amazed about how I handled my job. She would hold my cheek and say: “Pedro, I was at the Y in Iowa and I met guys from China there. How come you are so different from them? They were very shy and quiet. Look at you. You hang out with us and have a good sense of humor. You have our Latin blood in you.” She said so proudly and lovingly, as if I was her little brother who suddenly grew up. I said to her “I’ll do whatever I can to liberate my countryman from the dull image you have upon them and I am a fast learner.” She liked me the moment she came to Sloane House. I was kind to her and she felt at ease while working with me. We had a lot of fun working together. We had a lot in common too: unlike Sonya and Liz, Gina and I were both from a 3rd world country and came to America to look for a better life.

Like everyone at Sloane House, I liked Sonya the first time I saw her. She was warm and kind. She was 5’2”, blond hair with a sophisticated, flirtatious smile and a very heavy French accent. She was the darling of Sloane House. Liz came to Sloane House in the spring of 1989. Like Sonya, she had the French charm and she was a beauty. She had a long dark-blondish hair with deep, hazel colored striking eyes. Her father was French and her mother was from Iran. She inherited both cultures, a passionate French woman with a deep sense of cultural knowledge.

One night Sonya and Liz, I call them my French girls, invited me to the Island Club. It was located at down town area, close to Cannel Street. When I got in, it was filled with marijuana smoke. It was a reggae club, naturally everyone, except me were smoking marijuana. The French girls surprised me with their fond of marijuana. At that time, reggae was not my thing, so I left early. I became a fan of reggae music soon after.

Both French girls were happy souls and they enjoyed every moment living at Sloane House. They loved New York City and would go out every night. They also taught me their rich French culture etiquette whenever we went out for a drink or just hung out, from how to pour wines, to use hand gestures to make a point (extend the middle finger was one of them), or to poke fun at myself, or be sarcastic. I learned quickly, but I would jokingly say to the French girls, “You are wasting your time. You are dealing with a guy who worries about what to eat for his next meal.” The French girls made a long, exhausting working day easier.

2006-04-21

Talla - A Student and A Playboy from Kuwait

Talla lived a few doors next to me. He was a dark-skinned student from Kuwait. He introduced himself as “Ted” to girls who did not know him. It took him 7 years to complete a 4-year course. So he was not the good student by any strech. But he was smooth when it came to girls, especialy blondes. There was something about Arab man and their facinations about blones. Our friendship started with a misunderstanding of a personal hygiene. Every morning, I saw him came out of restroom with a one-gallon water bottle in his hand. At first I thought he used it to water his plant, flower or something. So one day, seeing him walk out of restroom with that water bottle in his hand, I said hello and mindlessly said to him: “Water these flowers again?” “Water what flowers? I don’t have flowers!” he answered, seemed perplexed by my question. I asked him what he was doing with that big water bottle every morning. He smiled. He said he never used toilet paper whenever he went number 2. Water was the cleanest way after a shit, he told me. I was so amused. I had never heard of such a thing. I laughed so hard. I then told him what I thought he was doing, he laughed too. We became good friends ever since and in many ways he was more of a brother to me in this new land. However, I always reminded myself not to shake his left hand.

Being a student from Kuwait was the best life a student could ever have: Kuwaiti government subsidized full tuition and some stipends, plus his family sent him money every month. There was no pressure to finish school for Talla. Why bother? Money would never run out and if he failed one semester, there was always another semester and more excuses to stay in the States. So chasing girls, to be precise, chasing blondes was his hubby. A year later, Iraqi invasion changed everything, however.

At the end of the summer of 1990, I moved out of Sloane House to an apartment in Queens. Iraq invaded Kuwait that summer. Talla was in California enjoying west coast blondes at the time. He phoned me when the news of invasion broke out. He told me he was in financial trouble. He could not get money from Kuwaiti government. His family escaped the invasion but they could not send any money to him for the time being either. So he moved in with me in a basement apartment in Queens. A couple of month later, Kuwaiti embassy in Washington D.C. started enlisting all Kuwaiti students in the US to get military training in an army base in New Jersey. One night he called me from the training base and told me that he just completed the training and within a day or so he would be heading to Saudi Arabia where ally troops and Kuwaiti government stayed, ready to liberate his country from the Iraqis. I wished him luck and told him I would look after his belongings and looked forward to seeing him back soon. The next day, however, when I came home from work, I saw 2 military bags lying on the living room floor. Talla and another Kuwaiti student were in his room. I was very surprised to see him and I could tell he felt somehow awkward when he saw me. He told me he didn’t want to fight and left the army training facility with another Kuwaiti student the night before their deployment. I didn’t know what to say. I was happy to have my best friend back, but at the same time I felt sorry for the solders who risk their lives for him and his country.

2006-04-20

A Young Kennedy and His Trouble

One Sunday afternoon, after finishing playing softball at Great Lawn in Central Park, I walked towards the exit at 72nd street and Park West. I was mindlessly walking, slowly. For some reason I felt people started looking at my direction with a strange look, a kind of look I never experienced before. I felt quite awkward. At first I thought something I wore caused the stare or something on my face that I wasn’t aware of caused the commotion. I quickly checked myself up and down, but soon realized people were not staring at me. They were staring at the person walking right next to me. I turned my head slightly to my right and recognized him right away – it was JF Kennedy Jr. He was wearing a sunglass with his baseball cap backwards. He just finished playing flag football with his friends and walking out of the park. When I told this encounter to my colleagues the next morning, Margaret, a city girl with her usual wit said to me: “You should have made a good use of your baseball bat. Hit him on the head and drag him to my apartment.” I knew she was a die-hard Republican through our political debate within the office. So I said to her: “I guess Junior’s charm can make a woman change her heart” Without a beat, she replied this to me: “Who said I am going to be a Democrat. Spent a night with me, I will make a Republican out of him…”

The beloved Kennedy Junior was not the story I want to tell. It was Karl Kennedy, a 19-year old kid from Ireland in the summer of 1989. Working as a Hospitality Center staff, he was 6 feet tall, with a messy, short blond hair and a boyish-looking face. I was an old-timer then when he arrived. He was a good kid, but he could not get along with Ron, our unionized cashier. Cashier’s job at Sloane House was a powerful job: they entered the check-in cards into computer system. Since this job was a union job, Hospitality staff was not allowed to touch computer keyboard. So if there were any problems with the room, residents would come to the Hospitality Center first and the Hospitality staff would have to go to cashier to check the nature of the problem. The way the cashiers protected the keyboard made you believe they were guarding a nuclear warhead launching keys. Keyboard was the symbol of power. They felt they had seniority over the international staff of Hospitality Center. Hospitality Center staff would have to wait for cashiers until they wanted to deal with the situation. It could be a while and often residents or tourists would be furiously and helplessly waiting until the cashier got up from his/her chair. It was even worse when there were more cashiers working. They would ask you to go to next cashier and next and go back to that cashier again. I understood the union cashier wanted to protect their job, I did not understand why they were mean to Hospitality staff. There were exceptions, not all of them were bad. Depending if he liked you or not, Ron would be the nicest cashier or he could make your life miserable. He was 6’5” tall, a long-legged black fellow from Brooklyn. His shear size was quite intimidating. He always worked at night shift. One night he was so irritated by a guest they started to exchange insults with each other. 2 minutes later, Ron jump over the counter started to threaten the guest. Mr. McAfee was still in his office that night. He came out and Ron backed away immediately. Mr. McAfee did not like what he saw; he called Ron to his office. I thought Ron would get fired. But McAfee didn’t fire him. Ron was very thankful for that and I noticed whenever he talked about Mr. McAfee after that incidence, he always showed his respect. Ron was a cool and loyal guy generally speaking. If he felt you respected him, you could do no wrong and he was your best ally. Otherwise, you were in big trouble.

The young Kennedy got a wrong footing with Ron. One night he got into a nasty shouting match with Roy and Roy wanted to take him out. The young Kennedy was hot-blooded too and willing to go out with Ron. Young Kennedy would not be a match for Ron. I had the responsibility to protect the young Kennedy, so I stepped in, not to help him, but to persuade Ron not doing anything foolish. Rony respected me, somewhat. He cooled down and had a talk with the young Kennedy outside the building and settled it peacefully. From that day on, the young Kennedy took me as his best friend. He would tell me everything. One day he asked me to take a walk with him. From his anxious and uneasy eyes, I sensed there was something serious he wanted to tell me. He told me he was seeing a girl and not sure how he should handle his situation: girl was a stripper working at the Show World on 42nd Street, just across Port Authority Bus Terminal. They had unsafe sex and that worried him now. He was afraid he might attract AIDS. He was fearful and had tears in his eyes. I didn’t know what to say to him, because I simply did not know much about AIDS. I just told him to find a place to get a test. I didn’t know then young Kennedy was also dangerously in love with the stripper.

One night I was woken up by the phone ring at 3:00 AM. It was the night shift manager at the front desk. She told me I needed to pick up my friend Karl Kennedy at the police station on 35th street. She told me briefly about what happened when I got down stairs: the young Kennedy came back late and was so drunk that he went to the girl's bathroom on the 10th floor, the student floor at 1:00 in the morning and he verbally abused a female student in girls's bathroom . The poor girl was so terrified she screamed for help. Floor RA called the police and police came quickly and arrested the young Kennedy. This was serious: only a handful of staff from Sloane House was allowed to go to student’s floor. These student floors were for SVA and Parson students only and the schools had signed long-term contracts with Sloane House. Mr. McAfee and Sloane House would sure have earful of complains from these schools. So I knew this was a bad situation for young Kennedy. I rushed to the police station. 35th Street police station was just a short block away from Sloane House. The police officer was very cordial with me when I told him I was there to pick up young Kennedy. I later realized the young Kennedy couldn’t possibly have had a tough time in the police station: he was a young Irish kid with a Kennedy name and got drunk. How anyone from the entire police force in New York City could have given him a hard time?

At 5:00am he emerged from the back room. Sobered and a bit embarrassed when he saw me. We went to Cheyenne Diner at the corner of 9th and 33rd Street for breakfast. He told me the story behind the story: while he was visiting his stripper girl friend, he saw she was having sex with, you guess it, another man. He was in such a rage that he lost his senses and went to Twins Pub across the street from Sloane House, drinking all night. He said he started hating every woman. At the end of the night, he came back so drunk and went to the wrong room at a wrong floor. He thought the girl's restroom was his room and wondering why a girl in his room. He started yelling at the girl and threatened to beat her. I couldn’t imagine how that poor girl felt at that moment. At the end he said whatever the police gave him to get him sober was the most disgusting thing he ever tasted. I said jokingly that I hoped this was the last time I had to pick him up from a police station over a stripper. He smiled. He was just a kid making a kid’s mistake. Turned out it was the last time. Mr. McAfee fired him right away when he heard this in the morning. He had no choice. He needed to protect Sloane House reputation and the long-term contracts from these schools. Young Kennedy got a job as a paddy at a private golf club somewhere in Pennsylvania after this. He came visit me a few times. He would tell me people at the club were lousy golf players with a bad attitude. When the summer was over, he went back to Ireland. A Kenney is always a Kenney: trouble with booze and woman.

2006-04-19

LimeLight and Sloane House Club34

Thousands of backpackers from all over the world stayed at Sloane House each year. Summer was the busiest season. At one point the check-in line was so long that it extended to the outside of the entrance. I had never seen anything like this. Each day hundreds would check-out, hundreds would check-in at the same time. Night clubs in Manhattan knew this was the place to get these young traveler’s attention. Vice versa, the young travelers wanted to explore New York City’s famous night clubs: Palladium, Tunnel, Shout and the best of all - the LimeLight. Located at the corner of 21th street and 6th Avenue, it was once a church. Many people said to me it was wired to see a church turned to a sin-filled night club. It didn’t bother me one bit. There was a reason I liked LimeLight so much: Every Friday afternoon a lady would come to the front desk of Sloane House dropping some club passes. Generally, Sloane House management did not like Hospitality Center counter got cluttered. So others working behind the counter would give her some hard times, especially the cashiers from time to time. I always tried to help her to place the passes whenever I could. She was a quite and elegant woman and I sensed dropping passes for the night club was not her profession and she might do it just to make a living. I guessed it was because of my kindness, one day she pulled me over and handed me an Executive Pass for LimeLight. All club passes were made of thin cardboard, but the Executive Pass was made of credit card-sized thick plastic. She told me that I could get in LimeLight for free. She said she really appreciated that I made her life easier. “You will like it.” She said at the end. I sure did. I didn’t realize it was one of the most amazing gifts in my life until I used it the first time: it was a Friday night. I got out of work and went to LimeLight with Talla. There was a long line. People had been waiting for quite sometime. LimeLight bouncers stood by the entrance door, were screening people, making sure there were a good ratio of boys and girls in the club. I walked over and showed my card to the head bouncer. He signaled to let me in right away. Just like that! I could hear oohs and ahhs from the crowd waiting in the line. It was awesome! I loved it. I would go to Limelight every weekend, until Limelight changed management and my Executive Pass was expired by default.

Night life at Sloane House was exciting too. When night came, you could smell the excitement: everyone wanted to go out and have a good time. I did not go out as much as the others in the beginning, mostly due to financial reason. There were lots of actions in the building as well, particularly on the second floor lounge. The main attraction was Club34. Club34 used to be a barber room for building residents. Not sure when it was converted in to an activity room, but there were still two old-fashioned barber chairs standing in the middle of the room. It was such a novelty that everyone would sit in these chairs for a minute or so, just to feel what was like. It had two pool tables, a foosball, many video games and all kinds of board games. There were movies twice a week. I charged $1 for the movie and unlimited re-fill of popcorn on Wednesday and Saturday nights. Next to Club34 it was a large lounge, used to be the bible study room when it was built. Next to the lounge it was the conference room that Sloane House YMCA rented it out occasionally.

2006-04-18

Life at Sloane House - Coming to Dream Land

In the summer of 1988, as one of the first 2 exchangees of ICYE (International Christian Youth Exchange, an exchange program founded after World War II) from China, I was placed at Sloane House YMCA in New York City. It was a one-year program. ICYE sent 2 exchangees from the US to China and China sent 2 exchangees to America in the same year. I could hardly control my enthusiasm when I thought of coming to New York City. I pictured it thousands of times in my head while preparing for the trip: it was a beautiful, exotic and adventurous place where the whole world evolved around it, where everyone dreamed to come to.

United Airline's 747 was packed. The flight was long and exhausting. When the plane approaching San Francisco International Airport, I watched the landscape of this beautiful city. America, the land of Beautiful! The sky was clearer and air was fresher.

After a brief orientation at Cleveland, I boarded the flight heading to New York City. I arrived at JFK Airport at 3:00 in the afternoon on July 29th of 1988. ICYE headquarters staff picked me up at the airport and drove me straight to Sloane House YMCA. While in the car, my heart was beating hard, eyes wide open and my breathing was heavy. I was just too excited about everything in my sight: the airport, the people, the bridge, and the skyline. I was the luckiest person in the entire population in China! Statistically, I had a greater chance of winning lotto than living and working in Manhattan, given the size of the population, and you can’t be luckier than that.

Built in the early 30s by William Sloane, a wealthy man at the time I was told, Sloane House YMCA building’s neo-gothic look had its New York-style charm. It was located at the southeast corner of 34th Street and 9th Avenue. Tii Carol was the first person I met at Sloane House. She was a former ICYE exchangee to then West Germany just a few years before. She was now the manager of Hospitality Center at Sloane House YMCA. She was waiting for me in her office. At that moment, neither she nor I had imagined our friendship would last our life time. She became one of the most important people in my life. She greeted me and handed me a key for my room on the 7th floor. Holding my key in my hand tightly, as if it would slip away, I was excited to get upstairs. The elevator seemed took forever to get to the 7th floor. I opened my room. It was 7 by 10, a box-size room had one small bed and a tiny standing closet and a desk with a TV on it. It had one window facing Westside. I quickly unload my luggage and went to the lobby area where Tii was waiting for me. She took me to a TGIF at the northeast corner of 8th Ave and 34th Street for a welcome dinner at 5:00 in the afternoon. When we were seated, I didn’t know what to order. It seemed everything was too expensive and I didn’t want to offend Tii, so I ordered a burger. That was my first restaurant meal in the United States. It was also my first taste of the wealth of this country. I could not believe how much the dinner cost: $50 for 3 people! I said to myself afterwards I would never be able to afford nor would I want to spend this much for a meal as long as I was in America. $50 equals 190 Yuen! The exchange rate was $1 to 3.8 then, a 3-month salary for a “middle class” professional and I didn’t even remember what it tasted like 5 minutes later! For the next two days, I would go to McDonald’s at the corner of 10th Ave and 34th Street with the coupon Sloane House Y provided me. It was part of the agreement: Sloane House provided me with room and board and weekly stipends and I worked full time at the International Hospitality Center, a front desk function. The value of the coupon was $3.50. Since I had yet received my stipends and only had two dollars in my pocket when I arrived at the Sloane House, my order could not exceed the coupon value.

McDonald was my gateway of realizing the wealth gap between China and America. This had nothing to do with the quality of the food at McDonald’s nor had anything to do with the taste of the food on the menu. It was the little things that I was in awe of: you could just pick as many well-packaged little bags of sugar, salt, pepper and ketchup as you pleased for your meal! I got slapped on the head from my father for eating a spoonful of sugar when I was a kid, not because it was unhealthy for me to eat sugar like that, but because there was not enough to last the whole month if I ate it like that. Everything was rationed when I grew up. I could not help but thinking what my dad would think if he ever saw life in America. He worked all his life just to make sure there was enough food on the table everyday. Unfortunately he did not have the chance to come visit America. He passed away a few years ago.

MY first night in Manhattan was one of the most memorable nights in my life. It was a humid hot summer night. fortunately Club34 on the 2nd floor was air conditioned. So I came down quickly after left my luggage in the room. It was a movie night. I stayed till midnight to watch the movie. it was Clockwork Orange. The only thing I could comprehend was freakiness, weirdness, bizarre and violence. I was too excited to sleep that night, not because there were ambulance siren sounds all night. The following day was Sunday. I was up early and ready to go. My work would not start until next Monday. So I went to Greenwich Village on foot along 9th Avenue. It was the daytime so I did not see as many people I expected. Posters were all over the place. I was drawn to an album cover in a window display of a music store: The singer in the picture was half naked. I could not tell if it was a man or woman. It left me such a strong impression. Years later, when I gradually broadened my cultural senses, I realized it was a he and his name was Prince.

For the ensuing days, before I received my first stipend, food coupons were my only currency. I would either eat at the cafeteria on the first floor or at McDonald’s. Finally pay day came. It was Thursday. It was surreal when the accountant handed me the weekly paycheck - $80. I was overjoyed! I determined to save every penny I earned and bring them home to share with my family and friends. I was very proud of myself and I knew my family would be proud of me too.

My first purchase was a loaf of bread. I wanted to taste what it was like to eat a piece of bread with my own money. It was also the cheapest thing in the store. The very next day when I came back from work, I found there were bite marks on my bread. I did not think much of it, other than thinking it was a bit strange. It did not occur to me, or put it this way, I did not want to think that it was a mouse that had eaten my bread, until I saw one running out of my room the following day. I was shocked and in disbelief. There were mice in the building! There are mice in America? Mice only exist in places that are dirty and poor places. Slums I lived in back home didn’t even have mice. Nobody had said a word about mice in America before I came. It never crossed my mind that there were mice in America, the dream land. Only later I realized New York City was the world capital of mice and rats. Many times, while I was on duty during the night, tourists, especially girls from European countries, would frantically call front desk about sighting a mouse in their room. The girls at the Hospitality Center would not do this part of the job. But it didn’t bother me one bit. Digging mouse holes and catching mice in the farm field was part of my childhood fun with my buddies.

Sloane House was the center of universe. Some of the world famouse land marks were just a few blocks away: world largest deparment store - Macy's was at 7th Avenue, Penn Station was at 33rd and 7th Avenue, world famouse arena - Madision Square Garden was at 33rd and 8th Avenue, world biggest post office - James A Farley Post Office was next to it, world largest convention center - Javis Center was at its west and most of all, Empire State Building was 5 minutes away. Many travelers liked the idea that they could just walked to Sloane House, even though telling them how to get here was a pain - many spoke little English.

It was a big building even by Manhattan standard: it had 14 floors and 1,500 rooms. Entering the building, there was a large lobby area. Two offices were on the right side of the it. One was a student center and the other was Tii’s office. On the left side of the lobby area, it was Hospitality Center and cashier section. Behind Hospitality Center, it was the reservation office and management office. Sloane House provided lodgings for a wide variety of people: Floor 11, 14 and 15 were part of International Youth Hostel program that provided lodgings for world young backpack travelers. Rooms on these floors had a bunk bed. Floor 8, 9 10 were for students from Parsons and SVA (School of Visual Arts); the 4th floor was for long-term residents and for students who were not part of the schools that had contract with Sloane House YMCA. Some of those long term residents had lived here for more than 20 years. Sloane house also accepted people with government vouchers and the rest were for other students from nearby colleges like the New School and walk-in visitors. The floors for students from Parsons and SVA were watched by security guards Sloane House provided and administered by the floor RAs. These floors were somewhat insulated from the other elements in the building. Sloane House YMCA did not house people with New York City IDs however, except for voucher holders. Who were those voucher holders? They were government sponsored drug-free program recipients or prosecution witnesses. There was also some young, want-to be actors living at Sloane House. Once they got their feet off the ground, they moved out of the Y and moved on.

Two days into work, before I even got a chance to see much of the city, I dove in right away and quickly became an expert on New York City’s hot spots and subway system. I had to be. Each day there were hundreds of tourists asking about where the Hard Rock Café was, which dance clubs they should go, how to get to Chinatown. I was telling people to take certain train lines from A to B before I even took the subway. Many appreciated that I told them about the Staten Island ferry boat tour. It was the best way money could buy to tour New York City, a round trip at just 25 cents.

Part of the responsibilities of Hospitality Center was answering the phones. The phone rang off the hook during summer time. Nobody wanted to answer the phone. The main reason was Hospitality Center did not take reservations and it was difficult to explain this to people over the phone, especially if they were Youth Hostel travelers. IT was frustrating on both ends. At first I was very intimidated by answering the phone. I could not understand what people saying and if I did understand them, I didn’t know what to tell them. I simply knew little of anything. But soon I overcame the difficulty.

My major was English. One of my goals coming to America was to learn English: learning English in a land that speaks the language. I wanted to speak English as fluent as an American. Very quickly, however, my hope was crushed. New York City was the worst place to learn how to speak English. Shakespeare and Canterbury Tale style of English I learned from college were useless when I arrived at Sloane House. Ronny, the front desk manager spoke Barbadians English, Maurice, the security guard spoke Jamaican English, Roy spoke Brooklyn English and the rest of the international staff spoke English with their accents (including the Irish). I was the only one that had the classic English training and spoke “proper” English (excluding the Irish). I was very disappointed and worried that I would not be able to learn a thing when I went back home. People had high expectations for guys coming back from America, if they ever went back. You were considered the luckiest of few and you supposed to know everything about America and the language at least. I mentioned this to the shop owner on the first floor. He was an old Italian man. He laughed: “If you truly want to learn English, get out of New York City. Nobody speaks English here. It’s a shame.” I started to learn how to speak New York English. Maurice and Roy were very enthusiasm about teaching me. I learned to say “I’m chilling”, in stead of “I’m fine. Thank you” when people greeted me with “How’re things?”

Thank goodness for TV sitcoms like “Three’s Company” and “Cheers”. It took me a while to understand half of its humors in Cheers though.

2006-04-17

A Tale of Sloane House at W34th Street

On November 24, 1993, Real Estate Weekly had this news blurb: “The YMCA of Greater New York, Inc., has retained Sheldon Good & Company of Chicago and Edward S. Gordon Company, Inc. (ESG) to offer for sale the 14-story, 266,315 square-foot Sloane House YMCA branch al 356 West 34th Street, Manhattan, and an adjoining two-story former city YMCA headquarters building at 422 Ninth Avenue, it was announced.”

Sloane House, once the largest YMCA residence in the United States, was converted into a high-rise a few years later. Few people know the history of this building. It housed thousands, if not millions since it was opened on January 1st of 1930. It was a magnet of drawing young travelers from around the world visiting New York City. It witnessed many events and touched upon many people’s lives. I lived and worked in this building from 1988 to 1990. In these two years I have met many people and experienced many events that shaped my life in America. There were murder, attempted murder, rape, robberies, suicide, betrayal, sex and drugs in the building. It was a reflection of New York City; it was a part of history of New York City. It now quietly stands in the shadow of a few modern high rises around her...