On a June afternoon in 2018, a man named Mickey Barreto checked into the New Yorker Hotel. He was assigned Room 2565, a double-bed accommodation with a view of midtown Manhattan almost entirely obscured by an exterior wall. For a one-night stay, he paid $US200.57.
On that summer day nearly six years ago, Barreto walked through the hotel’s revolving door on Eighth Avenue and entered a lobby centred by a six-metre art deco chandelier, a nod to the hotel’s geometric architecture.When it opened in 1930, to great fanfare, the New Yorker Hotel was not just the largest in the city but the second largest in the world. It was an opulent hotel of the future, with 92 telephone operators, a power-generating plant and a radio with four channels in each room.
With their laptops open, he claimed, they explored whether the New Yorker Hotel was subject to a little-known section of a state housing law, the Rent Stabilisation Act. The employee dialled the manager, and after a brief exchange, Barreto was told that there was no such thing as a lease at the hotel and that without booking another night, he would have to vacate the room by noon. The couple did not remove their belongings, so the bellhops did – and Barreto headed to New York City Housing Court in lower Manhattan and sued the hotel.
Back in their room days after the ruling, the couple read Stoller’s ruling over and over. In it, there was no order that the hotel provide a lease, no limit on their stay, no suggestion that rent was due.He said he called the court to ask someone to explain what exactly that meant. “You have possession,” Barreto, sharply and slowly stressing every syllable of the final word, said he was told. “You’re not a renter. You have possession of a building.
At the same time, the hotel’s owners had filed their own lawsuit to evict Barreto, claiming the hotel was exempt from the housing law’s hotel provision. Ultimately, the lawyers could not produce documentation from May 1968 to prove the hotel’s weekly rate was at the time more than $US88 a week. The judge dismissed the suit.
One of the diner’s owners, Alex Sgourgos, recognised Barreto. Since he had moved into the hotel, Barreto, along with Hannan, frequently ate at the Tick Tock, a round-the-clock restaurant styled as a 1950s diner with neon lights, red booths and a laminated menu. The two men often ordered breakfast, sandwiches and chicken entrees, Sgourgos said, and always paid in cash.After reading the letter, Sgourgos called the Unification Church, which told him to ignore Barreto’s demand.
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