Martinique New York on Broadway, Curio Collection by Hilton

It was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh and built by William R. H. Martin, who headed the Rogers Peet business, in a French Renaissance style.The welfare hotel gained a negative reputation across the U.S. and was the setting for Jonathan Kozol's 1988 study, Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America.The main entrance is on 32nd Street, through a three-bay-wide marble doorway at the center of the ground level, which is topped by a projecting marquee.The fifteenth story is within the mansard roof and contains projecting dormer windows, which are flanked by volutes and topped by finials.[25] The walls were of Greek Skyros marble in gray and yellow with light-purple veining, and a similar color scheme was used on the coffered ceiling,[19] from which chandeliers were suspended.[26][31] The cafe contained walls of light-colored, artificial stone, and its ceiling was treated in the Italian Renaissance style, ornamented in low relief.The walls and columns of Italian marble give to this room a richness which is completed by Pompeiian panels of unquestioned merit.[15][24] There were eight gold panels, which contained three-quarter length, life-size depictions of four men and four women, painted by Irving Wiles and Carroll Beckwith.[19][32] There was also a "Dutch room" with terracotta floors, hand-carved wainscoting on the walls, and murals depicting "quaint and picturesque Holland scenes".[32][26][35] The foyer was decorated in the Louis XIV style, with carved, dark oak woodwork and walls completely covered in period tapestries.[19] In 2006, the hotel had 14,000 square feet (1,300 m2) of convention space, which included a grand ballroom, an executive boardroom, and breakout rooms.[38] Martin had purchased the first part of the plot in 1892 and expanded it in 1893 and 1895; he then hired Henry Janeway Hardenbergh to design a French Renaissance-style hotel on the site.[44] The Real Estate Record and Guide wrote in April 1899 that "the Martinique has a waiting list of 65 names, and that at least one suite of two rooms and bath, rented at $500, has been sublet at $1,200".[56] Hardenbergh filed plans for the second annex in October 1907,[20][57] and the Rogers Peet store moved to the first three stories of the Marbridge Building.[17] T. Coleman du Pont of the Greeley Square Company, which operated the neighboring McAlpin Hotel, bought the Martinique from the Martin family in October 1919.[67][68] The Pennsylvania Drug Company leased a storefront on the southern side of the ground story the same year, within the space originally occupied by the dining room.[39] Harry F. Young, a climber who was scaling the hotel for a film, fell nine stories to his death in 1923,[70] prompting the New York City Council to ban "street exhibitions of a foolhardy character in climbing the outer walks of buildings by human beings".[13] In August 1930, the media reported that a Chicago-based department store was considering paying $9 million for the Martinique and neighboring structures, then redeveloping the site.[14][75] However, two companies signed long-term leases for storefronts in the hotel the following month, preventing the department store's development for the time being.[101] Over the years, the hotel typically housed families who could not be assigned to shelters in their own boroughs due to overcrowding,[102] as well as those displaced by fire."[104] The reverend of the nearby Church of St. Francis of Assisi said in 1974 that the hotel housed 300 families, along with 175 "discharges from mental hospitals, addicts, and alcoholics".[97] The Washington Post estimated in 1987 that one-sixth of the city's 12,000 homeless children lived at the Martinique, even though the hotel lacked basic facilities such as kitchens in each room.[24][106] The author Jonathan Kozol analyzed conditions at the Martinique for his 1988 book Rachel and Her Children, a study of homeless families.[113] In 1986, Manhattan Community Board 5 provided funding to convert the hotel's former ballroom (which had been used as storage space since 1956) into a play area for the children who were housed there.[114] Around the same time, state officials received complaints that families at the Martinique occupied "cramped, subdivided rooms without bathrooms [or] furniture".[115] The city government ultimately fined the hotel's owners in 1988 after finding that the guest rooms had been divided into cubicles of as small as 9 by 12 feet (2.7 by 3.7 m).[116][101] The hotel lacked in-room telephones, heat, running water, or elevator service, and the facade had become extremely shabby.[117] After the administration of U.S. president Ronald Reagan threatened to withdraw $70 million in federal funding, in 1988, mayor Ed Koch announced that he would close 46 welfare hotels within two years.[103] Developer Harold Thurman leased the building from Seasons Affiliates for 99 years in 1989, with plans to reopen the Martinique Hotel as a franchise of the Days Inn chain.In 1996, Thurman announced plans to operate the shuttered Martinique as a 530-room Holiday Inn hotel as part of a franchise agreement.