Opera House Hotel, New York: The boutique Bronx hotel where cabbies refuse to go

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Opera House Hotel, New York: The boutique Bronx hotel where cabbies refuse to go

This well-liked New York hotel is located in the borough that still strikes fear in the hearts of cabbies.

This well-liked New York hotel is located in the borough that still strikes fear in the hearts of cabbies.

Welcome to the Opera House Hotel. What brings you to the South Bronx?

Not a cab, perhaps, as the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, learned last week when one refused to take her to the hotel from Manhattan.

But a highly unscientific survey of the hotel's guests on Sunday afternoon yielded plenty of reasons tourists would come to a two-year-old boutique hotel lodged behind the Beaux-Arts facade of a century-old theatre in the borough that still, apparently, strikes fear in the hearts of cabbies.

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"The room was phenomenal," said Jennifer Montrose, 26, who had driven with her boyfriend from Richmond, Virginia, US, to see a Major League Soccer game at nearby Yankee Stadium. "The ceilings are super high."

"We wouldn't think of coming anywhere else," said Michael Bolton, a consulting software tester from Toronto who was in the Bronx for business and brought his wife and 11-year-old daughter along. "It's right on the subway and you pay literally half of what you pay in Manhattan."

Lance Redding, 34, a government worker from Washington, pronounced the hotel "better than I expected."

A room at the boutique Opera House Hotel.

A room at the boutique Opera House Hotel.Credit: operahousehotel.com

Meaning what?

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"It's the Bronx," he said. "I mean, nothing against the Bronx."

Many have had something against the Bronx, though, for a long time.

The two-year-old boutique hotel is lodged behind the Beaux-Arts facade of a century-old theatre.

The two-year-old boutique hotel is lodged behind the Beaux-Arts facade of a century-old theatre.Credit: operahousehotel.com

It was not always the case. When the Bronx Opera House opened in 1913 on East 149th Street, it was a major stop on the Subway Circuit - a 1900-seat theatre decked out in Italian-Renaissance splendor.

John Barrymore played there. So did Harry Houdini. Eventually, the first-run theatre became a grindhouse cinema. Things ended badly. "Bronx Movie House Where Girl Was Raped Is Closed" read a 1943 headline.

The building later became a nightclub, then a church, then nothing. Somewhere along the way, it was gutted.

Its fortunes mirrored those of the neighbourhood around it, which is known as the Hub for the six-way intersection and subway complex about a block away.

But the South Bronx has been on the mend, in fits and starts, and a few years ago, the opera house was taken over by Empire Hotels Group, which runs, among other places, the Pearl on West 49th Street, where you can pay $US580 ($A756) for a room on a Tuesday night.

In August 2013, the Opera House Hotel opened, a bold anomaly in a borough where lodging options tend toward the generic or unsavory.

Rooms range from about $US140 to $US200 ($A182 to $A260) to a night. Workers there on Sunday said they could not let a reporter see one, but they look nice in photos, and the common spaces are sleek.

On the street outside, new and old Bronx mingle. The hotel has three empty storefronts on the ground floor. But two are occupied, one with a Crunch gym where membership is just $US19.95 ($A26) a month (the Crunch in Union Square charges about $1US00/$A130).

A couple doors down from the Opera House is a well-reviewed Mexican restaurant with a festive backyard patio such as one might find in the hipper precincts of Brooklyn. There is Glamour's Barber Shop and Multiservice, a combination barber shop-cell phone store with a few worn stuffed animals in the window.

Across Brook Avenue is a Peruvian restaurant, a steamed fish place and 99-Cent Papa, that rare discount store that sells fresh meat. Around the corner, rolls of concertina wire quietly signal the presence of a juvenile detention centre.

Passing vendors hawk goods: a woman selling dollar soaps and deodorants, two for $5, from a bag on her shoulder; a scrawny man pushing a stroller crammed with random objects and topped with a box of fruits and vegetables.

"Guineos!" he rasped. A dollar bought a bunch of organic Chiquitas. Bolton, 53, said he had taken the subway to the hotel well after midnight several times on his last visit and found the Hub bustling enough to feel safe. "There's tonnes of people getting off the train at 1:30 in the morning," he said.

Which is good, given that a cab won't necessarily take you there. "That happened to us just last night," said Redding, who had come to New York with his girlfriend, a lawyer who was teaching at a conference in the Bronx.

Around 2:30 am, he said, he hailed a cab after a night out in Harlem. "I told him the address and he just said no and sped off," he said. "The next one did the same thing."

It is illegal for cabs to refuse passengers, and to refuse to take people anywhere within the confines of New York City.

"The third one," Redding said, "finally took us here."

The New York Times

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