Budget Lodging at ‘Ghostly’ Hostel

If you had been a guest at the New York International American Youth Hostel last March, you could have participated in a very unusual event organized for visitors: an exorcism of the century-old building’s ghosts.

The hostel, which provides clean, safe accommodations for less than $20 per bed, per night, is in a block-long, red brick building at 891 Amsterdam Ave., between West 103rd and 104th streets, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Although most of the guests are young, the hostel can be used by visitors of any age.

One of the trends for big-city youth hostels is to provide services to help visitors experience the local community without having to dig deep into their pockets. At the New York Youth Hostel, volunteers man a hospitality desk in the lobby and offer advice on what to see and how to get there. The staff also organizes free and inexpensive programs and tours.

That’s how the exorcism came about. Staff members have claimed sightings of a woman dressed in white pushing a medical cart in the basement kitchen area, and have reported the sound of singing coming from the chapel area. The programming department then arranged a ceremony last March to try to contact and settle the spirits of the “grandmothers.”

Regular programs includes free orientation sessions on sightseeing and safety in New York, held once a week in the winter and several times per week in the summer.

During the week of my recent visit, free tours were available to: midtown (Trump Tower, Rockefeller Center, Fifth Avenue); downtown (City Hall, the World Trade Center, South Street Seaport and Wall Street); Central Park; Greenwich Village, and Upper West Side taverns. Five-dollar tours were offered to Greenwich Village taverns, movie stars’ homes, and an Off-Off-Broadway play.

The building that houses the hostel was designed by Richard Morris Hunt, who also designed the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the base of the Statue of Liberty. Originally, it was used as the Assn. Residence for Respectable Aged Indigent Females.

It was abandoned in 1974, then gutted, renovated and reopened in 1990 as a 90-room, 480-bed facility with budget prices.

For reservations, contact the hostel at 891 Amsterdam Ave., New York 10025, (212) 932-2300. Rates for members of the International Youth Hostel Federation are $18.75 for a bunk in a dormitory room. Between June 1 and Sept. 30, the price will rise to $20. Non-members are charged a guest fee of $3 per night.

This year, the New York Youth Hostel should become the true center for budget travelers passing through New York. In February the Council on International Educational Exchange plans to move its retail travel service, Council Travel, to this location. The staff will be able to assist with both domestic and international travel arrangements for students and budget travelers.

In the lobby you can pick up a free copy of Urban Backpacker, a publication of the local hostel association, which lists hiking and biking trips organized for their members that you could join.

For advice on movies, concerts, lectures and theater events in Manhattan for $5 or less, check the monthly publication “Free Time,” available on newsstands for $1. Recently, free events included: a performance by the Dance Theatre of Harlem, the N.Y. Philharmonic and the Manhattan Symphony; film showings of Pygmalion, Star Wars, Yellow Submarine and a Streetcar Named Desire; plus jazz concerts, poetry readings and a discussion on “Tibet in Exile.”