Past Uncovered: The Hotel Granada
October 22, 2007
The Hotel Granada (pictured left, in the 1950s, courtesy of Brooklyn Public Library) once stood 16 stories tall at 268 Ashland Place between Lafayette and Fulton. Completed in 1927 (according to this DOB document), it immediately became a stomping ground for the borough’s wealthier residents and their visitors. Brooklynites celebrated weddings and other milestones in its Forsythia Room. Well into the 1960s, the hotel was a favored venue for events in the area. (A commenter in this Brownstoner post claims that visiting baseball teams used to stay there when playing the Dodgers.)
Fort Greene resident James Irons, who moved into the neighborhood in 1970, told me about the hotel at that time in a recent email:
By then was very quiet. There was a restaurant on the ground floor on the corner, the Gondola I believe. Used to see proper old white ladies going in for an afternoon cocktail and meal with their white gloves and hats. As the area declined there were ideas about turing the hotel into student housing for arts students in conjunction with BAM. Nothing came of the idea and the hotel changed hands and became one of the areas welfare hotels. It was renamed the Brooklyn Arms and the ground floor was converted into a laundromat.
Indeed, by the early 70s, the hotel had begun its transformation into a welfare hotel, one of over 60 that would eventually dot the city. In the mid-1980s, the hotel had become a notorious blight to the struggling-to-imrove neighborhood. BAM in particular took issue with the Granada (by this time called the Brooklyn Arms), which sat caddy corner to the academy and whose residents, as described in this New York Times article, intimidated concertgoers and created a general atmosphere of unwelcomeness as the venue strove to attain world-class status. The resentment of hotel residents toward well-heeled BAM patrons is not surprising, given the inhumane living conditions in the once grand building; no hot water, roach and rodent infestation, toilet paper shortages, broken elevators, large families in single rooms, and rampant drug dealing.
In July, 1989, the last homeless family moved out of the Granada, as the city of New York closed down its countless welfare hotels. After that, all that remained was one man who had lived in a rent-controlled apartment in the hotel for decades and could not be forced out. In 1994, the Hotel Granada’s legacy came to an unceremonious close as the hotel was demolished and the site turned into a parking lot for BAM.
Granada then (Courtesy of Brooklyn Pix):
Granada site now:
More pics of the Hotel Granada:
Street view from the early 1960s, with BAM (hotel is near left)
I’ll be posting more as I come across them.
Fascinating! Thanks for the intersting post. Just happened on your blog via Brownstoner and OneHansonPlace. As a soon to be resident of One Hanson, I’m enjoying learning about the history of Fort Greene. Too bad they tore the Granada down, looks like it was a beautiful building. Paved paradise and put up a parking lot…
Every time I read another story about something so historic being demolished and forgotten I feel like crying. I go to BAM weekly for movies and what not and it would be great to see a beautiful building like the Granada across the street – even if was a co-op or condos by now. Man, The 70’s and 80’s really fucked this city up. Thanks for the post though, keep em coming.
Great stuff; truly traces and acts like a social history of this area over the past 70 years.
More historical posts like this! I live just down Ashland from here and had no idea that this space was ever anything but a parking lot. I have often wondered about the history of the building directly across Ashland from there (adjacent to Tomas Biesel). And speaking of parking lots, why is it that both of those lots on Ashland are always nearly empty, when the Harvey Theater constantly takes up all the spots on my block for production trucks!? (sorry, just had to gripe). Thanks for the interesting story.
Hello.I don’t know if anybody is going to read this.I was on my computer looking up the Brooklyn Arms Hotel and ran into this article.I just wanted to say that I was once a resident of the Brooklyn Arms Hotel from March 87-Feb 88.It was a lot going on there,it wasn’t just the drug selling it was also a lot of prostitution going on there too.Crackheads were trading sexual favors for drugs.The workers were also having sex with the tenants.I know I was one of them.My mother was also messing with one of the worksers and caught the aids virus.It was one of the most disgusting places I ever lived in my whole life.I was 14 years old at the time.That was no place for kids.I just wanted to vent and get that off of my chest.I thought I was the only one that remembered that place.
My dad was a sea captain whose ships’ home port was at one time what I believe was called Erie basin. Our family home was in northeast Pa. For many years well up into the 50’s he and my mother often stayed at the Granada and in fact kept a trunk there with some personal items including a toaster and coffee pot so they would not have to use room service or eat out as often. As a youth I accompanied them on many of these visits and have fond memories of my stays, including the courteous staff, occasionally having room service breakfast, snacking on cheesecake from the deli around the corner, and looking in awe at the tiny vehicles below a high window and hearing the sounds of the bustling city as I lay in bed at night. It was quite a trip for a kid from a small town in Pennsylvania to stay at what I remember as a once grand and elegant place.
My children and I were residents(prisoners)at the Brooklyn Arms 1984-1989 The city of New York paid three thousand dollars weekly for 1 room I could not believe that the apartments that were available to us were worst than where we came from and worst as the bowels of hell we were in I blame my children’s father for never helping financially My children all have good jobs their lives and mines are stable As for the deadbeat Dad who caused us to become homeless he is living with his 82 year old mom he’s dying from aids karma is a mother-fin bitch now he’s waiting the upper room .
I worked for many years in the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower (another gem) from 1987-1997. The nature of my work allowed me access to virtually any place in the tower, and I would enjoy having my lunches along its parapets and especially in the dome. It has such a wonderful sweeping vistas of the boroughs. I’ve always had a fascination for the lives of buildings in the area, and the Hotel Granada always held a special mystique for me. I wasn’t able to find much information on it back then, but I suspected by its grandeur that it once had been a lively place. Having the luxury of viewing it from the tower, I could see how the roof would have made a fine roof-garden. Its image is locked in my memory as a place of happiness; I was saddened to read of others’ terrible experiences there in the ’80s.
Now, for a bit of morbid trivia:
Joseph John Lannin owned the hotel back in 1928 when he mysteriously fell from one of its 9th-floor windows. He is famous for, among other things, being a prior owner of the Boston Red Sox and was responsible for signing Babe Ruth.