New Hotel Rising at 5 Allen?

Down at the southern terminus of Allen Street, where the roadway forks into Pike, a narrow finger building is gradually on the rise. All signs point to this being a hotel, mere steps from another hotel in the works where Hong Kong Supermarket once stood.

Permits filed with the DOB indicate that this particular hotel will cap off at thirteen-stories.  It’s also interesting to note that neighbors lodged 22 complaints against the developers since work began. And that worksite negligence also led to a pair of stop work orders last month.  Otherwise, much of the new project remains a mystery.

Yet, like so many other properties on the Lower East Side, 5 Allen Street is steeped in immigrant history.  The tenement which once stood here was razed in 1958, and had been a vacant lot in the ensuing years.  At the time of demolition, the building owner reportedly asked the crew to leave the mikvahs (ritual baths) in the basement intact.  But everything remained buried.  That is, until restoration work on the Eldridge Street Synagogue in the 1980s reportedly uncovered the small purification pool.

But none of that history is part of this new tower.