From left: Marcus & Millichap’s Adelaide Polsinelli and 100 Orchard Street
A 22-room hotel on the Lower East Side is on the market, the Wall Street Journal reported, but a buyer will have to take an unusual factor into account when he or she makes an offer. The hotel doubles as a historical time capsule.
Randy Settenbrino bought the Blue Moon Hotel at 100 Orchard Street between Delancey and Broome streets for $1.24 million in two separate deals in 1997 and 2000, after spending years selling Italian menswear out of the storefront that now comprises the hotel lobby.
Before gutting the interior, Settenbrino entered the 15 tenement apartments above to find that many of them had been unoccupied and untouched since 1936. Inside he found 19th century cast-iron stoves, ancient appliances, and artifacts such as the 1920s homework assignments, boy scout membership cards and Babe Ruth advertisements.
He kept those artifacts and used them to decorate the lobby and the hallways of the hotel. The rest of the interior was completely redesigned and Settenbrino even added a three-story extension with a pitched roof, while restoring the original facade.
Now, he’s listing the hotel with Adelaide Polsinelli of Marcus & Millichap without an asking price. Rooms in the hotel are as large as 750 square feet and can command as much as $1,000 per night. But Polsinelli warns against using standard comps to arrive at an offer. “There are no comparable properties,” she said of “the museum hotel.” [WSJ]