Skip to contentSkip to site index

HOSPITAL OFFERS HOTEL AS HOUSING

By J. C. Barden

Credit...The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from
September 13, 1974, Page 41Buy Reprints
View on timesmachine
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

The French and Polyclinic Medical School and Health Center has proposed and the city's Department of Relocation has endorsed a plan to house Manhattan's temporarily homeless in the former New Yorker Hotel, which the center hopes someday to convert into a modern medical facility.

The proposal is being considered by the Mayor's office, and the medical center's officials plan to, meet early next week with community leaders to seek support for the idea, which could put as many as 500 families in the 43‐story 2,000‐room hotel on Eighth Avenue at 34th Street.

The proposal would be dropped if it were opposed by the community, according to a spokesman for the medical center, who added, however, that the bankrupt medical institution would have to “seek new social‐purpose programs that would generate enough money to allow us to keep the New Yorker.”

Judge Comments

The Hilton Hotel Corporation, from which the French‐Polyclinic Medical Center purchased the New Yorker, has moved in Federal Bankruptcy Court here to regain the building on which the medical center has not made a payment since it filed on July 10, 1973, under Chapter XI of the Federal Bankruptcy Act.

Judge Roy Babitt, the referee in the case, said yesterday that he “would look favorably” on any plan that the hospital had to raise money to pay off the Hilton group. The medical center's monthly payments on the New Yorker are about $160,000, according to Judge Babitt.

Trial Period Proposed

If the plan to house residents who are left temporarily homeless by fire or building condemnation is approved, the city's Emergency Housing Division of the Department of Relocation would pay the medical center $5 a day for each person accommodated.

Maxwell C. Kaufman, deputy commissioner of the division, said that if the proposal was approved, about 80 families, or 320 people, would be housed in the New Yorker for a trial period.

The New Yorker now houses only the administrative offices of the medical center, the cellter's postgraduate medical school, a few combined facilities of the French and Polyclinic institutions, and about 200 staff members.

The rooms at the New Yorker are in a condition that would allow them to be occupied immediately, a medical ‐ center spokesman said.