That day 68 years ago, Mitchell and Morino came across a long-abandoned room inside the building, which had been a 19th century hotel when the seaport was teeming with boat and ship traffic. When they came upon it, the room was like a place stopped in time, explained Martina Caruso, who was conducting the virtual tour. It was the old reading room of the Fulton Ferry Hotel. <\/p>\n
Under layers of dust, Mitchell later wrote, the two men found a rolled-top desk, a marble-top table stacked with three seltzer bottles with corroded spouts, four sugar bowls \u201cwhose metal flap had been eaten away from their hinges by dust,\u201d two brass spittoons, six bureaus with mirrors lined up, and a wire basket \u201cfilled to the brim with whiskey bottles of the flask type,\u201d and other oddities left there over who knows how many years. Mitchell described this encounter with the forgotten remains of hotel rooms in his essay, \u201cUp in the Old Hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caruso, the guide, who is the director of collections at South Street Seaport, said that she tries to reread \u201cUp in the Old Hotel\u201d at least once a year. She relayed how Mitchell, who immortalized the fishmongers, street preachers, a bearded lady, and other characters of the streets and harbor in his New Yorker<\/em> stories, became involved in the early years of South Street Seaport\u2019s preservation<\/a>. Mitchell served on the Museum\u2019s Restoration Committee from 1972-1980, and prior to that was already a notable historian of the Fulton Fish Market. <\/p>\n The upper floors have other implements and features that reflect its past. Caruso pointed out large original sinks that the Morton Brothers steam laundry operated in the upper floors at another time. One could almost feel the heat and steam that must have permeated the close quarters. At various points during this virtual experience, Caruso encouraged the audience to picture what had existed in the buildings\u2019 earlier lives and how, outside the small windows, the harbor must have looked crowded with steamships, ferries, and other ship traffic.<\/p>\n The tour, \u201cInside Schermerhorn Row: A Virtual Tour of the Seaport Museum\u2019s Landmark Buildings,\u201d<\/a> was part of Archtober<\/a>, the 10th annual New York-based Architecture and Design Month. The Center for Architecture<\/a> hosts this festival each October. This year, Archtober still had its amazing array of events, exhibitions, panel discussions, and tours, from entities such as the Historic House Trust, the Urban Green Council, Wave Hill, Bard Graduate Center, Untapped New York, and the Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, only some tours and activities were in person. Most were virtual, and many tours are archived and still available, like a video of the tour inside Schermerhorn Row\u2019s landmark buildings.<\/p>\n
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