These Are the Hottest New Hotels You'll Want to Book in New York
The Peninsula New York offers a loungier way to take in the city’s skyline on its sun terrace. (Photo: The Peninsula New York)
By Andrew Sessa
According to NYC & Company — the city’s official marketing, tourism, and partnership arm — 56.4 million out-of-towners flocked to the five boroughs last year, and we’re now on track to welcome more than 58 million in 2015, with about 20 million of them coming in the next few months.
Lucky for them, a bevy of new stays have blossomed across town.
Here, an insider’s cheat sheet to the best of the newcomers.
New kids on the block
The Baccarat is a newborn babe to New York’s hotel scene. (Photo: Baccarat Hotels and Resorts)
Right now, all eyes are on the weeks-old Baccarat Hotel (from $775), which lets locals escape to Paris without leaving Midtown.
The debut stay from the storied French crystal company, now owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts founder Barry Sternlicht, the hotel combines 114 Art Deco-inflected rooms; chandelier-hung salons; a bar inspired by Versailles’s stables; and a modern-French restaurant from Michelin-starred chef Shea Gallante and former La Grenouille host Charles Masson.
Related: Hotels With the Most Amazing (Free!) Amenities
A 50-foot black-and-white marble-lined indoor pool and spa from Creme de la Mer will open soon.
As the flagship Manhattan outpost of an Istanbul-based brand, the 128-room Marmara Park Avenue (from $550) brings some international swagger of its own to the city, offering Turkish tinges like wines from a celebrated vineyard in the country’s Anatolia region and hammam treatments at its spa.
The New York EDITION occupies Madison Avenue’s clock tower. (Photo: Eliott Kaufman)
Ian Schrager brings his Marriott tie-up to town in May: The 273-room New York EDITION (from $725) mixes Gilded Age-inspired American glamour and 21st-century social interaction — expect it to be as plugged-in and fashionable a draw as the previous EDITIONs in London and Miami Beach — all inside the impeccably renovated 1909 clock tower building overlooking Madison Square.
In July, Sterlicht continues his hospitality re-entrée with 1 Hotel Central Park (from $549), the second spot from his new sustainability-minded concept. (The first opened in South Beach in late March, with Brooklyn next.)
Sustainability is king at 1 Hotel Central Park. (Photo: Josh McHugh)
The 229-room eco-conscious escape designed by AvroKo allows blissful remove from urban grit and grime, with a three-story living wall, reclaimed rustic-chic materials and all-organic everything, plus an on-call Tesla, monthly farmer’s market and high-impact volunteering opportunities organized by local nonprofits.
Finally, there’s the writerly retreat The Renwick (from $479), which reimagines historic artists’ studios and apartments originally designed by St. Patrick’s Cathedral architect John Renwick in 1928.
Related: Battle of the Boutique Hotels in Rome
Once home to creatives and intellectuals of all kinds — John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Mann all slept here — the Midtown East hotel will open in August with 173 artfully appointed loft-like rooms and a restaurant from a to-be-announced starchef.
Renos, reinventions & reboots
The sun-flooded Gordon Bar at SIXTY SoHo. (Photo: SIXTY SoHo)
After ushering in a second wave of luxury boutique hotels when it opened in 2001 as the first Thompson, SIXTY SoHo (from $359) re-emerged this winter as the flagship of Thompson co-founder Jason Pomeranc’s new SIXTY brand.
Rock-and-roll-ready British designer Tara Bernerd handled the seductive design, which sees a clubby lobby lounge give way to a light-filled, mid-century-mod-feeling bar and breakfast room followed by 97 rooms above.
Downtown restaurant vet John McDonald will open the Italian-focused Sessanta in May, also overseeing bites at the summer-opening guest-only rooftop, long one of the city’s most sought after.
Less a renovation than a complete reinvention, the Martha Washington (from $219) has gone from being a landmarked 100-plus-year-old women’s-only Gramercy hotel to a wallet-friendly chic retreat, with public spaces designed by German-born minimalist master Annabelle Selldorf.
The 261 playfully decorated rooms, graphically done in red, black and white, feature references both classic and contemporary, and Danny Meyer’s Roman pizza joint, Marta, handles in-room dining, so if you can’t score a table at that packed-to-the-gills ground-floor space, you can always just book a room and order in.
The Times Square-squatting Knickerbocker hotel. (Photo: NeoScape)
An even more dramatic overhaul ushered in a new era at The Knickerbocker ($525), on West 42nd Street.
Originally opened as a glittering hotel by John Jacob Astor IV in 1906, the landmarked building spent most of its life as offices before re-launching in February as a contemporary, clean-lined 330-room member of Leading Hotels of the World, with three food-and-drink venues from chef Charlie Palmer, not least of all the soon-to-debut St. Cloud, a 7,500-square-foot 17th-floor rooftop bar and terrace overlooking Times Square. Another early 1900s hotel gem, this one originally opened to provide the first Waldorf-Astoria with overflow space, The Gregory (from $379) will telegraph tailored, masculine 1940s haberdashery style when it arrives by summer’s end. Sister property to the new Renwick, it sits in the Garment District, just adjacent to Herald Square, where it combines contemporary touches with original high ceilings and mosaic-tile detailing.
Related: French Hotels Under $125 a Night
A guest room at The Gregory in the Garment District. (Photo: Bill Rooney Studio, Inc.)
A top to bottom redo of the 400-plus rooms at Midtown’s Warwick (from $395), originally built by William Randolph Hearst in 1926, has added five new opulently designed signature suites themed to local legends, Hearst paramour Marion Davies, say, or the nearby Ziegfeld Theater.
Outer-borough arrivals
Looking for a log cabin-style stay, but want to stay within the city limits? You’ve got it at Williamsburg’s new, Urban Cowboy (from $150), a townhouse converted by Corcoran broker Lyon Porter into a four-bedroom B&B with Wild West and Adirondack pretensions. But about that cabin: It’s out back and features a wood-burning stove, clawfoot tub and more John Wayne style than usually found this side of the Mississippi.
Williamsburg’s rustic Urban Cowboy. (Photo: Ben Fitchet)
In May, urban adventurers will have a new reason to check out Queens, when Long Island City’s Boro Hotel (from $229) debuts, offering sweeping views back to Manhattan from its rooftop as well as the floor-to-ceiling windows of its 108 industrial-chic loft-like rooms, many with balconies.
Bushwick’s artsy BKLYN House Hotel. (Photo: Handout)
Back in Brooklyn, the same folks behind the Boro will launch the BKLYN House Hotel (from $179) in July, taking cues from its arty, rough-around-the-edges Bushwick location for the design of its 116 rooms and the atmosphere of its street-side patio and roof deck.
Restaurant revivals
The latest from chic-boutique hotelier Sean MacPherson, the Lower East Side’s Ludlow (from $225), has attracted particular attention for its restaurant, Dirty French, the first non-Italian outlet opened by the folks behind Torrisi, Parm, and Carbone. Just as they often-irreverently reinvented Italian-American classics at those spots, so too have they done with Gallic greats here, serving duck a l’orange and chicken and crepes in a riotously decorated dining room featuring art curated by Vito Schnabel.
At Thompson’s newly redone Smyth (from $375), in TriBeCa, top chef Andrew Carmellini has opened Little Park. There, the low-key style and simple local dishes emphasizing the fresh and seasonal belie the restaurant’s potential as a de facto Conde Nast Café for high-profile editors and publishing-side types who can’t stand the offerings of their new cafeteria at the nearby One World Trade Center.
Further uptown, the Gerber Group — beloved for buzzed-about Stone Rose Lounge at the Time Warner Center and more recent rooftop at the Viceroy on 57th Street — has just debuted Irvington, replacing Todd English’s Olives at the W Union Square (from $299). The open-kitchen spot, designed by rising Brooklyn-based hospitality wunderkinds Crème and featuring a brick oven and rotisserie, celebrates its proximity to the city’s largest Greenmarket, with hearty yet refined, seasonally driven Mediterranean-accented New American dishes plus bottled cocktails and juices from Liqueteria.
Rack of Colorado lamb at The Wayfarer. (Photo: The Wayfarer)
And in Midtown, at The Quin (from $599), which just welcomed new 17th-floor terrace suites, the year-old Wayfarer brings a bit of the beach to its otherwise well-tailored lounge-like vibe — don’t miss live jazz upstairs on Mondays — with a spring menu heavy on raw bar offerings, seafood platters, Maine sea scallops and lobster, in both bisque and roll form.
Perfect packages
Spring cleaning got you down? Through May, The Chatwal’s “Have It Maid” experience (from $1,500) combines a stay at the ultra-luxe Bryant Park-adjacent spot with treatments at its Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spa and, while you’re away, a floor-to-ceiling deep cleaning of your apartment by the mega-maid service New York’s Little Elves.
The Chatwal knows what time it is. (Photo: The Chatwal)
Or maybe it’s a personal cleanse you’re after: The Trump International Hotel & Tower New York’s “New York, New York” deal (from $739) puts together a personal training session and $100 spa credit with bottles from Heartbeet Juicery and on-demand fitness apparel from Under Armor.
The Peninsula, meanwhile, makes staycations with the kids easy — or at least slightly less of a money-suck — with a “Family Suite Package” (from $895) offering 50 percent off a connecting room when you book a one-bedroom suite; especially of note here is the May 1 reopening of the hotel’s chaise lounge-lined sun terrace.
The outdoor pools at the Gansevoort Park Avenue and Meatpacking will also be gearing up for the season, with day passes (from $300) even available to non-guests from Monday through Thursday, May 26 to July 30; the package includes not just pool access but also a complimentary cocktail and Glamour Bar amenities plus a poolside reflexology session and 30-minute massage.
The splashtastic Dream Downtown hotel. (Photo: Edward Menashy for Dream Downtown)
The pool’s the thing at Chelsea’s Dream Downtown, too, where the Friday-night “Hair of the Dog” post-party recovery package (from $645) reserves you a pair of shaded lounge chairs at The Beach — the hotel’s sand-covered patio and glass-bottomed outdoor pool — plus a so-called hangover burger and fries from the bar and grill, followed by a blow out in the hotel’s new celebrity-stylist IGK Salon and priority access to the hotel’s Sunset Saturday rooftop party.
The Plaza’s New Yorker deal (from $835), for its part, keeps staycating simple, offering a 10 percent room-rate discount to any and all locals, with a New York State driver’s license, looking to get away from it all without getting out of town.
Finally, Midtown’s recently renovated Warwick has just launched “Party Packages” (from $2,000) in its five new Signature Suites, encouraging small-group revelry along each space’s theme — a “Musical Feast” in the Follies Suite, say, complete with tunes, hors d’oeuvres, Champagne and dinner.
More from New York Post:
