The 7th, Avenue Hotel opened in 1890 across the grand Lyceum Theater, later known as the Rialto. Two of the Lyceum's beautiful glass-stained windows- now sit in the basement of the Carnegie Free Library in the city's history museum.
During the golden years of vaudeville, the hotel became a haven for the theater crowd and the place to be seen. World War I and II veterans' photos decorated the walls as the men brought their wives to see the traveling shows.
As the Great Depression of 1929 tore apart lives; it also took its toil on the great hotel The shows slowly gave way to movies and television. The hotel gradually lost business and eventually became a rooming house.
Bit by bit, it became a seedy rooming house. Finally, it closed in 1985.
The former owner sold off what remained valuable: the elegant brass beds, furniture, fixtures and the stained glass windows, valued at $4,000 each, that graced the tops of the outside windows and the tops of the doors to each of the 36 guest rooms.