Last month I checked into the New York hotel that has gone from seamen’s flophouse to celebrity hangout for the List. Here’s my take on it:
‘Hey, can you get me in?’ a woman with a brash New England accent squawks at me as I approach the entrance to the Jane hotel in New York’s West Village. Friday night is turning into Saturday morning, and what was a quiet residential street hours earlier is choc-a-block with yellow cabs, burly bouncers in high-vis jackets, and what looks disarmingly like a trope of frustrated extras from MTV’s The Hills.
Rooms cost less than 100 bucks a night, but with recent celebrity guests such as Kirsten Dunst and the 
Olsen twins, the Jane hotel’s stylish bar is just about the hottest spot in NYC right now. To make it past the imposing doorman it helps to be famous or know somebody who is: I shrug half-heartedly and the imperious bottle blonde in the designer dress moves on to the next guy. ‘Hey, can you get me in?’
Residents at the Jane may not be given preferential access to the bar, but they do get to stay in one of the most unusual and best value for money hotels in Manhattan. The bulk of the hotel’s 200-plus rooms are wood-panelled single-berth cabins, festooned in pink and gold wallpaper. Despite measuring little over 50 square feet, a $99 standard room comes equipped with all mod cons: flat screen television, air conditioner, wireless internet access. There’s even storage space beneath the bed and on a brass rail running above a mirrored wall.
Modelled on ships’ cabins, the surprisingly comfortable sleeping quarters are a definite nod to the hotel’s maritime heritage. The neo-classical red brick Jane began life in 1908 as the Seaman’s Institute and, before
reopening last year, was best known for giving shelter to sailors who survived the Titanic in 1912.
As New York’s docks declined, so did the Institute’s trade. In 1944 the hotel was taken over by the YMCA, becoming a flophouse for the poor and homeless.
So it remained until hip New York’s hoteliers Sean McPherson and Eric Goode bought the establishment in 2007. After renaming it in honour of the street it sits on, they set about transforming it into one of the city’s funkiest hotels. Refurbishment work is still on-going – the entire second floor is closed during my visit – but thankfully the Jane has managed to retain some of its original character(s). Over 60 permanent residents remain from the flophouse days, and with most bathrooms communal and uni-sex, you’re bound to bump into at least one or two long-term guests.
With the bar effectively off limits to the hoi polloi after dark, I head along early to sample its high-art meets low-kitsch vibe. It’s 6pm and virtually deserted; though in the cavernous cocktail room reserved signs are laid out across the chintz sofas. In the gorgeous lounge, modernist sculpture, paintings of Kaiser Wilhelm and a stuffed monkey with a fez number among my drinking companions – it’s not hard to see why A-listers and their entourage flock to the Jane.
You might not get a night-cap but for regular Joes, like me, the Jane is everything you could want from a New York hotel – cheap, central and consistently charming.
The Jane, 113 Jane Street, New York, NY 10014, 001-212-924-6700.
www.thejanenyc.com