Even as the spiffied-up Ace Hotel softly opened up for business last month, a relic of the landmark building's SRO past lingered: a red The Breslin sign over the cramped 1186 Broadway entrance used by the remaining rent-stabilized tenants.
Now, much of the building's scaffolding has come down and the hotel is open to all comers, so we dispatched Curbed roving photog Will Femia to the scene. Directly above is the expansive main lobby accessed via the hotel's 29th Street entrance, sometimes described in unkind terms but looking pretty darn snazzy to us. Femia also got a look inside the former Breslin entrance on Broadway, which certainly gives off a different vibe, though the haves and have-nots are not as segregated as one would think.
A report from the Femster:
I managed to get inside the "lobby" of the Broadway entrance, which is clearly marked (on the walls in chalk) as not done yet. The contrast of having the guard shout to me from his glass booth versus walking in the fancy front doors on the other side was pretty funny. What I ended up doing was walking through the main lobby to the back where the elevators are. Through the door past the elevators and you're out the Broadway exit. My point is that while the entrance itself is pretty shabby, you do ultimately end up in the big lobby. Of course, there's a spiral staircase going down in the Broadway lobby too. I don't know where that goes.
Probably to where the hipsters are buried.
