Haunted hotel guide · New York City

The Jane Hotel, NYC: Titanic Survivors and the Ghosts of a Sailors' Home

A 1908 sailors’ home on the Hudson that sheltered the surviving crew of the Titanic. Today it rents tiny cabin rooms, and some guests say the sailors never checked out.

By The Haunted Rooms Team · Updated November 2026 · How we rate hotels

2.2/5Haunted Rooms Score
1908Opened as a sailors' home
April 1912Titanic crew housed here

Check availabilityMeet the ghosts

The red brick building at the corner of Jane Street and West Street was built for sailors, and it still feels like it. Rooms are about the size of a ship’s cabin, the corridors are long and narrow, and the bathrooms are shared down the hall. In April 1912 it was where the surviving crew of the Titanic were given beds, food and clothes while the American inquiry into the sinking went on.

For years this was the Jane Hotel, a cult favorite for travelers on a budget. By 2025 it had been renamed the West Village Eurohostel, with bunk rooms and single rooms in the same historic building. Its ghost stories are quieter than most in haunted New York City, but they are tied to one of the most famous disasters in history, and that is reason enough to stay a night.

The Jane Hotel at a glance

2.2/5
Haunted Rooms Score
Haunted reputation2
History4
Ghost hunter access1
$ · Under $150
  • Address 113 Jane Street (at West Street), New York, NY 10014
  • Opened October 7, 1908, as the American Seamen’s Friend Society Sailors’ Home and Institute
  • Most haunted spots The narrow cabin corridors, the shared bathrooms, the former assembly hall
  • Best-known ghosts Sailors and Titanic crew said to linger; figures in the halls; the sound of sobbing
  • Booking the haunted room No single room is named. Book a single room for the classic cabin experience.
  • Good to know Now the West Village Eurohostel. Rooms are very small and bathrooms are shared on each floor.

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The ghosts of West Village Eurohostel (former Jane Hotel)

The Titanic crew

The story everyone comes for is the Titanic. After the Carpathia docked at Pier 54 on April 18, 1912, the Sailors’ Home took in the 100 surviving crew members while they waited to give evidence to the American inquiry, giving them shelter, food, clothes and money from a collection to cover lost wages. Atlas Obscura reports that the crew held a memorial in the building’s assembly hall on April 19, 1912, for the shipmates lost four days before, and sang “Nearer My God to Thee”.

Ghost writers say the grief of those days never left the building. There is no record of any Titanic survivor dying here, so the idea is about atmosphere and memory rather than a known death, but it is the reason the Jane turns up on lists of haunted New York hotels.

Figures in the corridors

The reports most often repeated, including in earlier versions of this guide, are of transparent figures seen in the long cabin corridors and the sound of someone sobbing late at night. Guests share bathrooms down the hall, so plenty of people walk these corridors in the small hours, and that is when the stories are set.

A century of sailors and drifters

The building has housed tens of thousands of people since 1908: merchant seamen paying 25 cents a night, later long-term residents of a rundown hotel, people at a detox center and crowds at rock clubs. Some believe a house that busy for that long is bound to hold on to a few of them. No individual ghost has a name or a room, which tells you these are stories passed on by guests rather than a documented haunting.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

  • Single cabin rooms: Cabin-sized rooms with a narrow bed, built to the original 1908 sailors’ room sizes and now sold as single rooms by the Eurohostel. The full sailor experience.
  • The cabin corridors: Long, narrow and dimly lit. This is where guests describe figures and late-night sobbing.
  • The shared bathrooms: Every trip to the bathroom is a walk down the hall, which is how most guests end up in the corridors at 3 a.m.
  • The former assembly hall: Where the Titanic crew held their memorial service in 1912. It later became the Jane Ballroom and is now part of a private members’ club, so it is not open to hostel guests.

History of West Village Eurohostel (former Jane Hotel)

The American Seamen’s Friend Society was founded in 1828 to look after sailors ashore. From the early 1840s it ran a boarding house at 190 Cherry Street, which the city took and demolished in 1903 for the Manhattan Bridge, so the society moved west to the busy Hudson River piers. William A. Boring of Boring and Tilton designed the new Georgian-style building, Olivia Sage announced a $150,000 gift toward it in March 1907, and the cornerstone was laid on November 26, 1907. It was dedicated on October 7, 1908.

The Sailors’ Home opened with about 200 rooms: up to 170 cabin-sized rooms for seamen, 32 for officers and engineers, and a 24-bed dormitory for stewards and cooks. Atlas Obscura says sailors paid a quarter a night and captains double. A light beacon on the corner tower once guided ships, and the roof had a garden and observation deck. In April 1912, after the Titanic sank, the home took in its surviving crew, and the society later commissioned a memorial plaque to those who died.

After the society opened its larger Seamen’s House in 1931, the YMCA ran the building as an annex, taking it over completely in 1944, and in December 1946 the Jane-West Corporation bought it and ran it as the Jane West hotel. Over the next decades it drifted: by the 1980s it was the Riverview Hotel, with long-term residents, a detox center and rock clubs in the old ballroom. Theater for the New City staged shows on the ground floor from 1972, and in 1997 the space became the Jane Street Theatre, where Hedwig and the Angry Inch ran in 1998 and tick, tick… BOOM! in 2001. RuPaul lived in the tower in the mid-1980s. The city made the building a landmark in November 2000.

In early 2008 Sean MacPherson, Eric Goode, Ira Drukier and Richard Born bought the hotel for $27 million and, with BD Hotels, restored it as The Jane, keeping the tiny cabin rooms and adding a ballroom bar that became one of the hardest doors in the city. Hotelier Jeff Klein bought the whole building from BD Hotels in December 2022 for $62 million; the ballroom and upper floors became part of his San Vicente Bungalows private club, which opened in March 2025, and by 2025 the guest rooms were operating as the West Village Eurohostel, with bunk rooms and single rooms.

Tips for a haunted stay

  • Book a single room for the classic sailor’s cabin, and pack light: there is barely room for a suitcase.
  • Bring flip-flops and a small toiletry bag, since bathrooms are shared on each floor.
  • Look for the Titanic memorial plaque on the building, and visit in mid-April if you want to stay on the anniversary of the crew’s arrival.
  • Walk the Hudson River Park in front of the building at night. Pier 54, where the Carpathia brought the survivors in, is a few minutes south.
  • Pair your stay with a night at the Bowery Hotel, created by the same pair who revived the Jane.

Want to investigate, not just sleep?

Sleeping in a haunted hotel is one thing. Investigating one after dark is another. On a Haunted Rooms ghost hunt our team takes you through the building with professional ghost hunting equipment, runs EVP sessions and lets you explore on your own during free roam.

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Frequently asked questions

Is the Jane Hotel haunted?

It has a reputation for it. Guests report transparent figures in the narrow corridors and the sound of sobbing at night, and many link the stories to the Titanic crew housed here in 1912. There is no record of anyone from the Titanic dying in the building, so treat it as a story with real history behind it.

Did Titanic survivors stay at the Jane Hotel?

Yes. The 100 surviving crew members were housed in the American Seamen’s Friend Society Sailors’ Home in April 1912 while the American inquiry went on, and they held a memorial in the assembly hall on April 19, 1912.

Is the Jane Hotel still open?

The building still takes overnight guests, but by 2025 it had been renamed the West Village Eurohostel, offering bunk rooms and single rooms with shared bathrooms.

How big are the rooms at the Jane Hotel?

Very small. The single rooms keep the cabin-sized footprint of the 1908 sailors’ rooms, and every room shares a bathroom on the same floor.

When was the Jane Hotel built?

Construction began in 1907 and the building was dedicated on October 7, 1908, as the American Seamen’s Friend Society Sailors’ Home and Institute. It became a New York City landmark in 2000.

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

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About the authors

The Haunted Rooms Team runs public ghost hunts and overnight investigations at historic venues across the United States. We research every hotel in our guides using hotel histories, local archives, news coverage and the accounts of guests and staff, and we review each guide regularly so you are not booking a hotel that has closed or changed its name. Spotted something out of date? Let us know.

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