It's usually a red-letter (red-arrow?) day whenever an intrepid reporter takes the time to go visit one of our city's many rooming houses (remember the Hotel Carter?), and comes back with mini horror stories. Today, in the Observer, revel in the blackened windows, dangling door handles, brown carpet, bedbug allegations, and Peep World views that await you at the storied 1,700-room Hotel Pennsylvania, which may be the trademarked "World's Most Popular Hotel," but comes in at No. 278 out of 335 NYC hotels listed on TripAdvisor, where we found that lovely peeling-wallpaper shot you see above, along with enough vacation snapshots to get any mold-remediation specialist excited. Even the building's owner, Vornado Realty Trust, reserves a backhanded compliment for the place, dubbing it a "placeholder, sort of like a parking lot," as it awaits the dawn of tomorrow's great West 34th St. redevelopment. We'll be in Gowanus. The eggs are delectable.
· Landmark Hotel Pennsylvania Needs Big Dose of Lysol [NYO]
· New York's Hotel Pennsylvania [TripAdvisor]
· The Hotel Carter: Ye Olde Times Square Grime [Curbed]
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