The Maritime Hotel

The Maritime Hotel is a distinctive modernist hotel at 363 West 16th Street on Ninth Avenue in Chelsea, Manhattan, immediately north of the Meatpacking District. The twelve-storey building was designed by New Orleans architect Albert C. Ledner for the National Maritime Union, which commissioned several striking maritime-themed buildings in New York during the 1960s. Completed in 1967 as the union’s Seamen’s Training School and Dormitory, the narrow white-tiled building was given a deliberately nautical appearance, most noticeably through rows of circular windows measuring approximately five feet in diameter and a front wall that slopes slightly like the hull of a ship. The union used the complex for accommodation, training, medical and recreational facilities for seamen, with a neighbouring low-rise annex completed in 1969. After the decline of the National Maritime Union, the property was sold to Covenant House in 1987 and later used by the New York Service Center for Chinese Study Fellows. It was converted into The Maritime Hotel in 2003, with the new owners retaining the building’s unusual exterior and developing the maritime theme further inside through teak panelling, cabin-like rooms and the original oversized porthole windows. The hotel also became closely associated with the nightlife of the surrounding Meatpacking District, with restaurants, bars and the former Hiro Ballroom occupying parts of the complex.

The Maritime Hotel has appeared in Bored to Death (2009–2011) and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999–), with both series using the actual hotel rather than disguising it as an unrelated building. Bored to Death makes the location particularly identifiable by referring to The Maritime by name when George Christopher temporarily moves there, while Law & Order: Special Victims Unit uses both the hotel and TAO Downtown, the large restaurant and nightclub occupying part of the complex.

In Bored to Death (2009–2011), The Maritime Hotel appears in the season-two episode «Make It Quick, Fitzgerald!» (2010), after George Christopher, played by Ted Danson, discovers that his apartment has bedbugs and temporarily moves into the hotel. The episode revolves around Jonathan Ames being hired by George’s rival Richard Antrem to discover whether Richard’s wife Priscilla is having an affair, without Jonathan initially realising that the other man is George. After hiding in Priscilla’s bedroom closet and inadvertently witnessing George and Priscilla together, Jonathan later meets George at The Maritime. George is thoroughly enjoying his temporary accommodation and tells Jonathan that having bedbugs has turned out rather well because he may never want to leave the hotel, although he complains that the Meatpacking District has become too much like Los Angeles. The scene continues over breakfast as George questions Jonathan about what he witnessed during the previous night and explains his continuing feelings for Priscilla. The Maritime is therefore not simply an anonymous hotel exterior in the episode: it is identified by name and becomes George’s temporary home while his apartment is being treated.

In Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999–), The Maritime Hotel appears in the season 24 episode «The Presence of Absence» (2023), during an investigation centred on Zoe Greene and her relationship with a mysterious person calling himself Klaus Darcy. Zoe believes she has been meeting a man she encountered through a dating app, with their sexual encounters taking place in darkened hotel rooms where she is blindfolded and prevented from seeing or touching him properly. After one encounter becomes an assault, Benson and the SVU team begin investigating and eventually discover that Klaus is actually Zoe’s best friend Jenna Scott, who has been disguising herself and manipulating Zoe. The police arrange another hotel meeting in an attempt to expose her, bringing the deception at the centre of the case into the open. Filming took place at The Maritime Hotel, while TAO Downtown within the same complex was also used for a restaurant scene involving Zoe and Jenna.

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