HOTEL STORIES: Revisiting Ye Olde Carlton Arms, the hotel with art (literally) on the walls

by Billy Jam

On East 25th Street, near the corner of 3rd Ave., is the entrance to Ye Olde Carlton Arms Hotel, a one-of-a-kind hotel with a history that’s linked with its radically changing neighborhood. A locked gate that you have to get buzzed past leads upstairs to what has to be New York City’s most unique and colorfully charming and cozy, albeit funky, places to stay.  With 54 rooms (about half of them with shared baths) at some of the cheapest prices you’ll find in Manhattan (starting at $80 a night) the Carlton Arms is attractive not only to the budget-conscious traveler but also to art-loving guests who stay at this special East Side hotel – a place whose room and hallway walls are adorned with all kinds of art including paintings, collages, sculptures and straight-out big ole graffiti burners. It’s inspired at least one book, Hotel Stories, by Mike Tyler, and there will be a book release party for the collection of stories on Feb. 29 at the hotel.

Some of the artists who have contributed to the Carlton’s walls include Banksy, Andre Charles, Paco Simone, Garance, Darek Solarski, Venus and Jim Belgere.  The walls of hotel’s Room 10C were recently turned over to the artists BilliKid, Elisha Cook Jr. CERN and photo-journalists/collagist Jim & Karla Murray. That’s when I first stumbled upon, and was enamored with, the Carlton Arms and had the opportunity to talk with its ever-engaging manager, John Ogren.

Continue to New York Press to read entire interview with John Ogren.

Gallery & Studio, New York Notebook

HOBOHEMIAN FLOPHOUSE: The Carlton Arms Hotel, where each room is funky art installation and there’s a cat box down at the end of the hall, is New York City’s last low-rent hipster haven by Ed McCormack, Photos by Darek Solarski.

If it happens to be laundry day, a visitor to a nondescript tenement on Third Avenue at 25th Street with pizza parlor on its ground floor and an incongruous red awning that says “Ye Olde Carlton Arms Hotel” might encounter an obstacle course of plastic bags the size of large boulders, spilling down the long, narrow stairwell and blocking the entryway. This presented n problem for a trio of youthful Scandinavian backpackers, two boys and a girl, who scaled the stairs as effortlessly as Alpine climbers, with barely a glance at Darek Solarski’s ambitious mural, reprising in minature the multitude of works by other artists that cover virtually every square inch of the hotel’s five floors.

It was not just their clean-cut blond Hansel and Gretel looks and knapsacks that evoked the term “babes in the woods.”… to read entire article go to ‘Gallery & Studio’ website.

Carlton Arms: This Ain’t No Holiday Inn

by Eva Silverman

Brace yourself. You’re about to learn one of the best-kept secrets in Manhattan: The Carlton Arms Hotel. A place to spend the night if you’re visiting from out-of-town or want to party in the city sans 45-minute train ride home, the Carlton Arms is the perfect place for stowing away friends who think a visit to the city includes free reign over your pint-sized apartment. And the Carlton Arms is more than just a hotel. Each room (and common space) is painted by up-and-coming artists, making it a de facto art gallery, without the oft-accompanied pretentiousness. Spending a night at the Arms is a very New York experience, yet affordable in a city where renting an apartment is not. If a cookie-cutter hotel with humdrum paintings of drab-looking flower vases is what you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong place. Take it from the t-shirt: “This ain’t no Holiday Inn.”

Continue to NFT to read to whole story.