Many hotel owners sent prepared food to rescue workers and offered to turn over as many as 25,000 of Manhattan's 70,000 hotel rooms for displaced office workers.
Lehman Brothers negotiated a friendly takeover of the Sheraton Manhattan Hotel on Seventh Avenue north of 51st Street and refurnished 665 rooms as offices for about 1,500 bankers and analysts who do not know when they will be able to return to their offices. Lehman is based in 3 World Financial Center, a building that remains intact but was connected by a skywalk to the demolished World Trade Center.
Out went the beds and in came folding tables, fax machines, and copiers. Lehman Brothers will continue to "control" the hotel until sometime in November although details were not forthcoming.
Hotel guests were being moved to Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers across the street that has 1,750 rooms and 55,000 square feet of meeting space.