The Mercer
SoHo is the only area in Manhattan without skyscrapers. The tallest buildings
are a modest six storeys. These light-filled warehouses were once inhabited
almost exclusively by industry.
A decade ago André Balazs, hotel impressario and owner of LA’s Chateau
Marmont, acquired a red-brick building on the corner of Prince and Mercer
Streets, in the heart of SoHo. The Mercer is the first hotel to offer a
taste of “loft living”, an urban signature that is original to New York
City. The conventional notion of a hotel room has been abandoned. Instead
every room feels like a loft, with plenty of space and natural light —
exactly what attracted the artists who first gave this area its distinctive
character.
A loft demands a design approach that enhances rather than fills the space.
That is why Balazs chose to work with Parisian designer Christian Liaigre.
The combination of handsome, pared-down furniture in African wenge wood,
neutrally toned textiles, simple lamps, dark wooden floors, pure white
walls, crisp white linen, and a hint of lilac leather on elegant banquettes
is exactly what was needed — a subtle, clean and classic approach that
steers clear of furniture fashion.
The Mercer Kitchen, a restaurant in the basement, creates the feel of eating
in the kitchen. The ambience and the cuisine of chef Jean-Georges
Vongerichten has made the Mercer Kitchen one of the most consistent
restaurants in SoHo. The matte-black crowd of ad agency staff, art
directors, photographers and fashion people may have shunted out the
artists, but SoHo still has an attitude you won’t find on the Upper East
Side. For Nathan Silver, author of Lost New York:
‘If anything should stand forever as a radiant image of the essential New
York, it ought to be these (SoHo’s) commercial buildings.” Continually
evolving in response to contemporary needs, they are “the best and purest
that New York has to offer”.
The Mercer, 147 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012 (001 212 966 6060, www.mercerhotel.com).
Room rates from £250.
Soho House
The façade is small, the tiny reception is not even big enough to be called a
lobby, and the text on the door is smaller than an Out to Lunch sign. It’s
the reverse of the “come in we want to impress you” lobby. The message at
Soho House is: “Go away we don’t want you . . . unless you’re a member.”
“Charming,” you say, “what kind of hotel is this?” And that’s the point. Soho
House is not a hotel, it’s a private club — the hottest private club in New
York — that happens to be a small hotel.
The rules are simple: if you are not a guest, you cannot eat in the
restaurant, swim in the pool, lunch on the roof, drink in the bar, watch a
film in the private-screening room or chill out in the Cowshed — the club’s
spa — unless you’re a member.
Film directors, writers, artists, creative types make up the member roster,
and yet Soho House is not painfully arty, either. It has struck a balance
between cosy and trendy. Part of the credit goes to designer Ilse Crawford,
who has brought a freedom to Soho House that goes beyond established notions
of style. Traditional chesterfields share the same space with Saarinen
tables, Italian lamps and Danish design classics. The look is a mix of
laid-back modern and iconic antique, with the odd bit of bling.
Soho House, 29-35 Ninth Avenue, New York, NY 10014 (627 9800, www.sohohouseny.com).
Room rates from £230.
Hotel on Rivington
Situated bang in the middle of the Lower East Side, Hotel on Rivington is a
study in contrast; a shiny glass and steel tower in a neighbourhood of
dilapidated tenement buildings that once housed the highest density of
immigrants in the world. One of the last “hoods” to relent to a property
market that is always in seach of more affordable space, it differs from
SoHo, TriBeCa, the Meatpacking District and Chelsea because there are no
warehouses — only rows of skinny five and six-storey brick buildings.
Paul Stallings, one of the first property developers to grasp the
neighbourhood’s potential, made the bold commitment to build a hotel from
scratch, to create something not so much to “blend in” as to “fit in”. A
team was found to come up with a creative programme that would mirror the
street cred that defined the area. Dutch enfant terrible Marcel Wanders
worked on the public spaces and French designer India Mahdavi created the
guestrooms. Both were inspired choices: Mahdavi has made a name worldwide
with timeless yet funky feminine furniture, while Wanders has proven, not
without controversy, that removing the bourgeois concept of “good taste” is
one of the only ways to move forward.
Less than a year after opening, almost all of New York has heard about the
cave at the hotel entrance, the Thor restaurant is consistently voted in New
York’s top 100, and the rooms are spacious. But the real advantage of the
hotel came as a surprise to everyone, including the owners. There had never
been a tower in this area, so no one knew that the hotel would have such an
amazing view: New York’s skyline from a new perspective is a bonus for both
guest and proprietor.
Hotel on Rivington, 107 Rivington Street, New York, NY 10002 (475 2600, www.hotelonrivington.com).
Room rates from £170.
Chambers
A trendy address with a downtown mentality — Chambers is a new kind of uptown
hotel. The art consciousness that one would expect from SoHo or TriBeCa has
been mixed with the more formal profile of a Fifth Avenue address. Situated
a stone’s throw away from Fifth Avenue’s most glamorous boutique, Chambers
is one of the most desirable Midtown areas, just below Central Park.
At first glance, the interior, a mix of tribal stools, velvet-clad
contemporary design and serious art, seems out of place in a neighbourhood
normally more comfortable with imitation French grandeur. Architect David
Rockwell, a veteran of some very famous restaurant installations, was
brought in to realise an interior to go with the art. For many hotels, art
is an afterthought. At Chambers, art was the starting point. The owner of
the hotel are serious collectors, and the property was intended as a
rotating showcase for their collection. Larger works hang in the public
spaces, smaller ones are featured in the guest rooms.
I have always been sceptical of the hotel as a gallery, but at Chambers it
works because it reflects a genuine and intelligently conceived collection,
and one that is constantly changing. During my stay, it consisted of
contemporary artists from Asia: a fascinating mix of photography, painting,
works on paper and sculpture.
With raw concrete ceilings, industrial lamps bolted to the walls, polished
concrete bathroom floors and drafting tables with steel vintage work stools,
the interiors are not what you would expect from a hotel around the corner
from Tiffany’s. But that’s exactly why it works — a bit of edge between the
poodles and the Bentleys is a good thing.
Chambers, 15 West 56th Street, New York, NY 10019 (974 5656, www.chambershotel.com).
Room rates from £180.
Library Hotel
Books, books and more books. It’s an appropriate theme for a hotel situated on
Library Way — the nickname for the stretch of 41st Street that leads to the
New York Public Library and is paved with bronze plaques inscribed with
quotations from some of the world’s most acclaimed writers.
The Library is the first hotel to base itself entirely on books. The small
lobby is framed by bookshelves and the reception desk is designed as a faux
card catalogue that could once have housed library index cards. The
second-floor lounge where breakfast is served is lined with bookcases.
The rooftop bar, a beautiful space that could double as Cary Grant’s penthouse
in a stylish pre-war New York film, is called Bookmarks, and features the
dark, moody area known as the Writer’s Den and the poetry garden, as well as
the outside terraces.
Rooms use the traditional library classification code of the Dewey Decimal
System, so that there are no numbers or names. For example, the fourth floor
is classified as Languages, and my room was labelled 400.006. Ancient
Languages. In my room the shelves were full of books on ancient languages.
It makes a change from the same magazines most New York hotels place in their
rooms. The Library is a cosy, clubby hotel near the New York Public Library,
as well as Grand Central Station.
Library Hotel, 229 Madison Avenue at 41st Street, New York, NY 10017 (983
4500, www.libraryhotel.com). Room rates from £180.
New York Hip Hotels by Herbert Ypma (Thames &
Hudson, £12.95); see www.hiphotels.com. Copies can be
ordered for the BooksFirst price of £11.66 (free p&p) from 0870
1608080, www.booksfirst.co.uk.
