Sunshine Hotel

241 Bowery | Lower East Side | built 1920

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1922
Frank Mazzara opens the Sunshine Hotel in a former pickle factory
Broom-maker Frank Mazzara buys 241 Bowery, by then a pickle factory, and opens the Sunshine Hotel. He reworks the facade in Art Deco and Commercial styles, with pale yellow brick, limestone panels and pediments, and plaques showing a wreath and torch. Guests can stay for ten cents a night.
Source: Wikipedia
1998
September 18
NPR profiles the Sunshine Hotel in an audio documentary
David Isay produces an NPR segment on the flophouse, which airs on September 18, 1998, when about 125 residents live there and a night costs $10. The hotel's manager, Nathan Smith, narrates both Isay's piece and Michael Dominic's 2001 documentary Sunshine Hotel. Smith dies of cancer in 2002.
Source: Wikipedia
2004
August
The Sunshine Hotel's owner begins buying out its residents
In August 2004 owner Anton Bari starts buying out residents and turning away new guests, with about 44 guests still living there. By 2008 fewer than 30 remain. In 2022 the bar chain Veloce applies to expand into the building's ground-floor space, though residents still live upstairs.
Source: Wikipedia

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