Miscellaneous

The Gilded Age History of HI New York City Hostel

Jessica Quandt · October 20, 2025

In a Nutshell

What do budget travel and the Gilded Age have in common? More than you’d think! The magnificent HI New York City Hostel building is one of the last remaining NYC structures designed by Richard Morris Hunt, the architect famous for building mansions for Gilded Age industry titans including the Vanderbilts. Back in the 1880s, HI NYC’s beautiful Victorian Gothic building was a residence for the Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged and Indigent Females (ARRAIF). It nearly met the wrecking ball in the 1970s, but a major preservation effort by American Youth Hostels (now HI USA) and many other local organizations saved it. Read on to see how hostelling saved a vital piece of Gilded Age architecture and made it a welcoming spot for travelers today.

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What does hostelling have in common with The Gilded Age? More than you might think. Fans of the HBO show might struggle at first to connect hostels, a form of budget-friendly accommodation that brings together diverse travelers from around the world, with the high-society splendor of Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue in the late 19^th century. But that’s where Richard Morris Hunt comes in.

Richard Morris Hunt: Architect of the Gilded Age

A historic portrait of the architect Richard Morris Hunt — An 1885 portrait of architect Richard Morris Hunt. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

Known today as “the Architect of the Gilded Age,” Hunt was born in 1827 in Brattleboro, VT. After moving with his family to Europe in his teenage years, he became the first American to be admitted to and study architecture at the renowned Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. While studying, he also helped his mentor work on prestigious local projects like the Louvre. By the time he returned to the United States in 1856, Hunt was already an experienced architect with some serious credentials under his belt.

While Hunt would become famous for many things – founding the country’s first architectural school, co-founding the American Institute of Architects, and designing both the façade of the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, to name a few – it was his work designing lavish mansions in New York City and Newport, Rhode Island for Gilded Age titans that he’s most remembered for today. Working for members of prominent New York families such as the Vanderbilts, Hunt made his name bringing to life extravagant homes that exuded power and status.

An old black and white image of a large Gilded Age mansion owned by the Vanderbilt family in New York City in the 1880s. — The Hunt-designed 660 5th Ave. mansion for William K. and Alva Vanderbilt was completed in 1882, the year before the ARRAIF building opened. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

But, as Hunt’s obituary in The New York Times in August of 1895 reminded readers, his professional interests and projects extended well beyond commissions for families with names like Vanderbilt and Astor.

“The most successful of his dwellings were not exclusively the palaces of New-York and Newport that every one knows. There were much humbler and less costly homes of his designing that had as high an artistic value,” the Times wrote.

A historic black and white photo showing an extravagantly designed dining room from the Gilded Age — Much of Hunt’s most famous work centered on opulent residential design, like this dining room inside the Vanderbilt mansion that once stood at 660 5th Ave. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The Original Building: ARRAIF and the Association Residence

It’s one of those more “humble” projects that brings us back to hostelling: it was Hunt who designed the building that now houses HI New York City Hostel.

Of course, like many hostels around the world, HI New York City’s building started its life as something else: a residence for “pensioners” of the Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged and Indigent Females (ARRAIF). While the name of the organization is a mouthful, and has some questionable social connotations today, it was for all intents and purposes a well-intentioned charity. Backed by religious organizations and wealthy New Yorkers, its aim was to help widows of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, as well as other older women deemed sufficiently “respectable,” with food, clothing, lodging, and care, keeping these women with limited or no incomes from landing in the literal “poorhouse.” The organization began in the early 1800s and, by the second half of the century, they’d raised enough money to build a huge residence for their pensioners on 20 lots of land in northern Manhattan between 103^rd and 104^th streets.

Likely thanks to influence from high-status board members, the ARRAIF managed to secure Richard Morris Hunt to design the new building. Construction began in 1881 and continued for two years, at a cost of about $100,000.

This historic image of the ARRAIF building is from the Mechanical Curator collection, a set of over 1 million images scanned from out-of-copyright books and released to Flickr Commons by the British Library.

Opened to residents in 1883, the Victorian Gothic-style building housed about 100 women, plus staff who kept the place running. Residents had to meet age and religious requirements to be accepted, pay a $150 entrance fee, and surrender any personal property to the Association. In exchange they received room and board in the expansive brick building, with a fireplace in each bedroom, shared bathrooms, a huge dining room, a chapel, and a secluded garden.

Hunt died in 1895, and over the years that followed, most of his buildings in New York City were torn down to make way for newer projects. But the “Association Residence” building remained. The Association even expanded the property with an addition designed by architect Charles Rich in 1906, and renovated the residence’s interiors in 1965 to make them more modern.

But by 1974, the ARRAIF residence had become an unsustainable enterprise. New regulations were changing the way these types of nursing homes operated, and on top of that, the building needed fire safety updates that the ARRAIF couldn’t afford to make. The Association decided instead to relocate to a new building, and residents were moved off site to await more permanent housing.

The building went into foreclosure, and one of the last remaining Richard Morris Hunt buildings in New York seemed well on its way to demolition.

A Brush with Demolition: Abandonment, Historic Recognition, and Preservation

HI USA Board Member alumna Lisa Gurwitch speaks on stage with Sam Watters, author of the book, “The Gilded Life of Richard Morris Hunt” during a book event at HI New York City Hostel.

But around that time, fate began to take control in a very grassroots sort of way. At nearby Columbia University, a student named Fred Chapman, studying historic preservation, received a class assignment to find a historic New York City building and get it listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Chapman decided on the AARAIF residence just down the road from his university, enlisting a Columbia architecture student named Linda Yowell to help. News that the building was slated for demolition added urgency to their efforts, and Chapman and Yowell went to the Architectural League to set up a special committee, working with neighborhood organizations to get the building listed.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, though that act in itself was not enough to save the structure. Unable to pay the cost of maintaining the building, the ARRAIF withdrew from the site and, as abandoned buildings do, this one eventually fell into disrepair. In the blackout of 1977, the roof of the building caught fire, causing huge amounts of damage to a building that was already becoming dilapidated. The City of New York took ownership of the building in 1978.

Six young travelers sit on a wall in front of thee stone arches making up the entryway to a huge brick building. — A decades-old image shows young travelers seated around the original entryway of the ARRAIF building after it became HI New York City Hostel.

Hostelling Saves History: the Birth of HI New York City Hostel

What to do with a 90,000-square-foot building that was falling apart yet could not be torn down was now a conundrum for the City to figure out. The City needed something that would make good use of the space and have a positive effect on the neighborhood, and neighborhood associations wanted to ensure the building would not simply be turned into luxury housing. At the same time, the organization then known as American Youth Hostels (or AYH, which is today known as HI USA) was looking for a property large enough to meet the demands for a hostel in New York City. The “Hunt Building,” as it had become known, was perfect – except for the fact that it needed work totaling several million dollars, which nonprofit AYH did not have, to bring it up to safety codes and make it suitable for hundreds of domestic and international travelers on any given day.

The exterior of HI New York City hostel, an enormous Gilded Age-era brick building, as seen from Amsterdam Avenue. — The historic Richard Morris Hunt-designed HI New York City Building as seen from Amsterdam Avenue in Upper Manhattan today.

AYH worked in partnership with the City, local community organizations, private developers, and even a local Congressman to secure funding help and put together a viable plan, and work finally began on the property in 1987. The slate roof and brick work on the upper stories, badly damaged in the fire a decade prior, were repaired; the main building entry lowered and revamped for modern-day visitors; hundreds of tons of debris accumulated over years of damage removed. The building was brought up to safety codes and made comfortable for modern travelers before finally opening its doors to guests in 1990 with 480 beds starting at $19 a night.

A gif rotates between a black and white image of the historic chapel at the ARRAIF residence and the room today in its function as a ballroom and meeting space at HI New York City hostel. — Historic image courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York

Today, the hostel is the largest in North America with over 600 beds, along with private rooms, a café, a game room, meeting rooms (where keen-eyed visitors may recognize the arches of the ARRAIF chapel), and plenty of space for travelers to unwind and meet new people from around the world. And, of course, the garden behind the building is now a private green space for hostellers, beckoning travelers with barbecues, live music, and community events throughout the year.

Travelers outside at dusk in the back garden at HI New York City hostel. There are small international flags draped overhead on the brick patio, with picnic tables, large red umbrellas, and trees. — Today, HI New York City Hostel’s garden is enjoyed by guests from around the world as the largest private green space in Manhattan.

While it may not have its roots in fabulous wealth or high society, hostelling saved one of the city’s last remaining buildings by the Architect of the Gilded Age himself, Richard Morris Hunt. And today, thanks to hostelling, that living history is open to curious travelers from around the world, with or without a Gilded Age budget.

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