The biggest symbol of the Bowery 2.0, the gleaming New Museum, also happens to be touching one of the last reminders of the Bowery of old, the Sunshine Hotel. Given the pace of luxury development along the former boulevard of broken dreams, you had to figure that the SRO flophouse?its colorful inhabitants and employees featured in countless documentaries and NYU journalism class assignments?would not be left standing for long. And indeed that was the plan, but hold the wrecking ball, because the Post reports that the Sunshine has been spared for at least three more years, thanks to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development's ruling that hotel owner Roseann Carone threatened and harassed tenants in an effort to clear them out (duh, it's a flophouse). Carone wanted to raze the hotel, at 241 Bowery, to build condos, but now she'll have to wait to reapply. There are fewer than 30 tenants now living at the Sunshine. Maybe they can just move next door and inhabit some sort of "living exhibit" about the Bowery's seedy past?
· 3 More Years of Sunshine for Bowery Bums [NYP]
[Photo via Flickr/Walking Off the Big Apple]
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