The Webster Apartments, a nonprofit that provides housing to women who are studying or interning in New York City, bought a Brooklyn hotel after selling its West Side residence.
The organization, endowed by the Macy’s fortune, bought a 128-key hotel at 229 Duffield Street in Downtown Brooklyn for $42 million, records show. The Lam Group was the seller.
The purchase follows Webster’s April sale of its original building at 413 West 34th Street, where it had operated 376 units as a single-room occupancy building since 1923. It was initially a home for single women working as clerks at the department store.
After the sale, the organization rented rooms to women at a temporary Midtown East location, a former DoubleTree Hilton hotel at 569 Lexington Avenue. A single room at the hotel rented for $2,950 — an hefty increase from 2019, when a room at its Hudson Yards building rented for as little as $1,430, including light housekeeping, two daily meals and a host of social activities.
The Webster Apartments and the Lam Group did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Brooklyn establishment, which was built in 2009 and appears to have closed during the pandemic, had been operated by IHG Hotels.
To be eligible to stay at the Webster Apartments, women must be studying full-time at a college or university, or interning or training in a trade, technical or artistic program, according to its website.
The nonprofit traces back to Charles Webster, a cousin of Macy’s founder Rowland H. Macy, who following his death in 1916 left the bulk of his estate to build the West 34th Street property.
At the time, there were between 60,000 and 70,000 self-supporting women in New York, according to the New York Post. But the number of female-only accommodations has dwindled of late. Not only did Webster Apartments empty its West Side building, but the Centro Maria Residence at 539 West 54th Street in Hell’s Kitchen was sold last year.
Excel Development Group bought the 12,500-square-foot residential building for $25 million. Catholic Charities of New York sold the property to pay legal claims to sexual abuse victims.
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