Heights History: A Room At The Hotel St. George, $10 A Week… In 1880

After going back in time to 1902 last month, we’ve given the Brooklyn Daily Eagle archives another spin into the past. This time we transport back to July 10, 1880, 132 years ago today…

What a deal! The Hotel St. George is offering special summer rates, for $10 a week. Your offer includes a bedroom, parlor and private bath, plus the option for a four-course breakfast (40 cents), four-course lunch (35 cents) and five-course dinner (50 cents).

Perhaps you’re looking for accommodations that are a bit more permanent. Sure enough, bargains abound. How about a nicely furnished room at 98 Henry Street, with running water, heat and gas: $5-$6 a week. Only five minutes to the Brooklyn Bridge and ferries to Manhattan.

Interested in first-class accommodations for gentlemen and families “at very moderate rates”? There’s the Pierrepont House on Montague Street [which today is the Bossert Hotel at 98], with your option of American or Europeans meal plans. There’s also a large front room with running water at 73 Henry Street, at the corner of Orange Street: $10 for two. A smaller room is also available that’s suitable for two ladies (as long as they’re employed during the day).

Here’s one that’s hard to resist: Alcove, square and single rooms to let with or without board, at 62 Columbia Heights. Includes hot & cold water, ample closets and furnishings—connected to a private park with an “extensive view” of the harbor. Or perhaps you’d prefer a nicely furnished room on the second or third floor of 99 Hicks Street, perfect for a “gentleman & wife” or single gent. And at 151 Pierrepont Street, you have a choice of one or two “handsomely furnished” rooms on the second floors of a private home. Sorry, gentlemen only and no meals.

And finally, a curiosity that’s not in Brooklyn Heights, but was so packed with prejudice, we’re including it as a sign of the times in 1880. Two floors are available to families, four rooms per floor in a three-story house, for $8 a month. The address is 37 Bartlett Street [in Williamsburg]: with a provision that the space is available only to “English, Irish or French; no Dutch or Afghanistans.” Is it ironic that in 2012, that address is an empty lot?

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  • BH’er

    Most inflation calculators only go back to 1913 for CPI data… $10 in 1913 is the rough equivalent of $225 today… add a few more years to that and it’s probably in the range of $300-$400/night

    A little cheaper than a midtown hotel room, but I doubt they included free WiFi back then

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlsiLOnWCoI Arch Stanton

    Um thats $10 a week

  • Knight

    So well under $50 per night, Arch. Where in Brooklyn can one get a room that cheap nowadays (I’m guessing there’s one somewhere)?!

  • Andrew Porter

    The Pierrepont House Hotel is *not* now the Bossert. The late Dennis Holt, writing in the Brooklyn Eagle in May, explained, “before the Bossert was built, a hotel called Pierrepont House stood on the site.”

    There were numerous SRO hotels in Brooklyn Heights, some dating back to the 19th century. They include the Miles Standish, the Pierrepont, etc. In the days before autos, the BQE and FDR and Brooklyn Bridge, and the concept of city as “heat sink”, BH, jutting out into the East River and a leafy paradise, was a cool refuge from the teeming streets of NYC.

  • Andrew Porter

    Left out Mansion House on Hicks Street, a major hotel back in the 19th century, reconstructed as an apartment building—losing much of its gardens—in the early 20th century. Then there was the Palm, the Windsor Arms, the…