Location of The Anvil

The Anvil occupied a distinctive flatiron-shaped building at 500 West 14th Street that began its life in 1908 as the Strand Hotel. In its earliest years, the building served as a rugged boardinghouse for sailors and waterfront workers who arrived at the nearby Chelsea Piers. The structure was so tied to the maritime trade that during the aftermath of the Titanic disaster in 1912, reporters from the New York Times famously rented rooms here to use its telephone lines to dictate their dispatches back to their newsroom. By the time it became the Anvil in 1974, the surrounding neighborhood was a gritty, industrial maze of meatpacking plants, and the building had evolved into a site that prioritized privacy and anonymity for its patrons.