New York’s Newest Hotels Reveal the City’s Romantic Streak

07.08.2024 - 23:10 / nytimes.com / Martin Brudnizki

Hotels are often agents of change in a neighborhood. That’s certainly true in New York, where buttoned-up Wall Street and the frenetic NoMad district, north of Madison Square Park, are just two of the beneficiaries of the city’s latest hotel boom. More than 40 properties have opened across the five boroughs since 2022, during apost-Covid rebirth that’sbrought freshenergy to long-overlooked pockets of Manhattan as well as to its most well-trodden quarters. Among these new arrivals are the Hotel Chelsea, a long-awaited revival of the venerable art-crowd hangout, and Nine Orchard, an elegant makeover of a 1912 bank building on the Lower East Side. Then there’s the Aman, the hushed retreat that opened two summers ago in the middle of Midtown. At least two more luxury hotels are planning to welcome guests next month: the Surrey, an Upper East Side landmark entirely remade by the Malta-based Corinthia Hotels group, and the Manner, an upscale sibling of the Standard hotels, in SoHo. Here, a closer look at five other attention-worthy newcomers:

Not too long ago, Manhattan’s NoMad neighborhood was an unglamorous commercial hub, home to a slew of wholesale jewelry and luggage businesses. Now it’s brimming with lively cafes and bars and a cluster of stylish lodgings. Just down the block from both the Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad, housed in a 50-story high-rise, and the Ned NoMad (see below), the Fifth Avenue Hotel opened last fall in two adjoining buildings: a 19th-century mansion turned bank, and a new glass tower that holds the majority of the property’s 153 guest rooms. The designer Martin Brudnizki gave the interiors his signature maximalist treatment, mixing textures and jewel-toned patterns to create an atmosphere that’s both bohemian and romantic, akin to a cross between Victorian London and Belle Epoque Paris. Cafe Carmellini, the restaurant overseen by the chef Andrew Carmellini, feels just as anachronistic, evoking a Gilded Age power lunch spot, where deals are made within a double-height dining room amid towering, sculptural faux trees.

Known for its elegant hotels in Paris and jet-set vacation spots like St. Bart’s and Cannes, the French hospitality group Groupe Barrière opened its first U.S. property two years ago, the 97-room Fouquet’s New York, on a quiet cobblestoned street in TriBeCa. The red-brick facade echoes the neighborhood’s renovated warehouses, but step inside and you’re in a Parisian dreamscape conjured by Martin Brudnizki. The in-demand designer (his studio is also behind the revamped Surrey, in addition to the Fifth Avenue Hotel) filled the rooms with cut-glass chandeliers, curved sofas, fringed lampshades and a color scheme that favors soft hues of blush, peach and celadon green.