Nursing home visitors joked about wanting to be old women

In 1883, the Association Residence Nursing Home opened its doors on Amsterdam Avenue. At the dedication ceremony, visitors remarked that the comfort of the building almost amounted to luxury, making them want to be old women. The building was designed by Richard Morris Hunt - the man who designed the base of the Statue of Liberty and the Biltmore.

Originally, the building served the Society for the Relief of Indigent Respectable Females. This was a safety net providing clothing, small stoves, and food to elderly impoverished women who were once affluent. In 1881, the Association bought the lot on Amsterdam Avenue for $77,500 to build a Victorian Gothic building designed by Hunt. He was the first American architect trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

The building survived a lot of history to stay standing. It was constructed near an elevated railway being built one block west, survived a 1907 addition that lost its Tiffany windows to the Morse Museum of American Art, and survived a fire during the 1977 blackout. Robert Moses even proposed razing the building for a slum clearance project, but preservationists with ties to Columbia University fought to preserve it.

Today, it is the largest hostel in North America. If you want to sleep in a building that once offered enough luxury to make the young jealous, this is the spot. It has 670 beds and a lot of history.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons