HERMITAGE HOTEL

It's the place to stay if you you don't mind the ghosts of demolished theaters. Before it went down, the Stanley was playing "A Woman Rebels," with Kate Hepburn; that fixes the picture at 1936.

The entrance was once quite striking, but the building was old and dated by 1930, and the Times Square itself was getting seedy. (Yes, that happened before the Taxi Driver era.) The facade was modernized in 1933. Just aswe regret the loss of storefronts like the "Bar & Restaurant" you see, uerbanists of the era regretted the loss of the original design.

The Times:

In 1943, the operator of the Hermitage, Oliver Clandorf, was convicted on prostitution charges. According to court testimony, the eighth and ninth floors and a separate elevator were exclusively devoted to prostitutes and their customers. Later that year, the hotel was renamed the National, the name it retains today.

Or did, until it was demolished.