"Hotel Marseilles, ca. 1912.

The Hotel Marseilles was part of a flurry of Upper West Side “apartment hotel” construction in the opening years of the 20th century, spurred by the extension of the IRT Broadway line, completed in 1904.

Apartment hotels — essentially apartment buildings with centralized “hotel” kitchens on lower floors, rather than in each unit — took advantage of loopholes between the Tenement House Law of 1901 and city building codes, allowing developers to build larger, higher density, and less strictly regulated buildings.

As building codes were adjusted, apartment hotels fell out of fashion and units in the Hotel Marseilles were converted to traditional apartments, equipped with in-unit kitchens. In 1979, the building was converted to subsidized housing for elderly New Yorkers."