A suite in the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York.
PD
September is perhaps the best month to visit New York. The city may never sleep – but we in these hotels love it all the more.
Aman New York
You’re almost ashamed to admit it, but you feel a little like a paparazzo. Standing on the roof terrace decorated with bonsai trees, from which you can see Tiffany and Co. and Fifth Avenue, a furtive glance to the left, a quick glance to the right in the lounge bar: Isn’t that . . .? In New York’s most exclusive hotel, you expect to run into celebrities around every corner. In no other hotel in the city can you move around as undisturbed as here: The “Aman New York”, which opened in August 2022, is only accessible to overnight guests; only they and the members of the private club are allowed to get into the elevator that leads to the lobby on the 14th floor. Only the jazz club in the basement is open to everyone. It is bathed in dim red light and looks so casually elegant as if it were the set of a James Bond film.
The listed Crown Building – built by the same architects who also designed Grand Central Station – has an eventful past: it housed the MoMA, the offices of Dior and the men’s magazine “Playboy”. The only naked facts left are in the saunas of the three-story spa, where the shaman Nick gets your body’s heart rate back on track with a “sound bath” session.
Although the first “Aman” in the USA, the hotel remains true to its Asian roots: The star architect Jean-Michel Gathy relied on Japanese minimalism, also in the “Nama” restaurant. Try the tasting menu from head chef Takuma! At the counter made of Hinoki wood, you can watch the maestro conjure up the individual courses.
In winter, the glass roof on the “Garden Terrace” is simply closed.
PD
Fires flicker in the 83 suites, and rice paper-covered panels separate the bathroom – oh, what a fabulous rain shower, like a refreshing spray. One wall is covered with painted washi wallpaper. An almost sacred calm sets in as soon as you enter the high, champagne-colored room. Only the view from the window of the iconic Bergdorf Goodman department store reminds you where you are: in the middle of the city that never sleeps.
You hardly notice any of the noise of the big city in the hotel’s 83 rooms.
PD
A double room in «Aman New York» is available from $1,950 per night.
Warren Street Hotel
This is the moment to pinch yourself. A suite with its own terrace, and that in the Big Apple, where balconies alone are something like the ultimate solution, a virtual impossibility in hotels. And here: cedars in front of skyscrapers, grasses and flowers with bees buzzing around them. Admittedly, not all of the 69 individually designed rooms and suites have a private outdoor area, but they do have floor-to-ceiling windows flooding in with sunlight.
A junior suite in the Warren Street Hotel in New York.
PD
The Warren Street Hotel is the latest coup from Tim and Kit Kemp. The couple founded the Firmdale hotel group in London in 1985, and since then Kit has been furnishing their own hotels with her design studio, designing wallpaper, fabrics and tableware. The sister hotel of the New York hotels, which opened in February «The Crosby Street Hotel» in Soho and «The Whitby» in Midtown is the first hotel in which her daughters Minnie and Willow were involved.
The colorful design of the rooms is an ode to the hotel’s location. It is located in the former textile district of Tribeca, in the south of Manhattan.
PD
The Kemp DNA has been kept true in two ways. A colorful aesthetic including contemporary art and a mix of patterns and materials that makes you ask yourself: does this go together? And how! In the “Drawing Room”, from which an honesty bar leads, striped Chesterfield sofas stand in front of floral wing chairs, in the restaurant a sculpture by Gareth Devonald Smith stretches across the counter, the sky-blue walls of the orangery are decorated with porcelain by Martha Freud, and zebras and dogs jump across the colorful plates by Robina Jack.
“Colors make you happy – they add spice to life,” says Kit Kemp, who decided to have the steel facade of the newly constructed building painted bright blue. The loft-like design and the carpets in the Warren Street Hotel are a nod to the textile factories that used to be located in the Tribeca district.
A double room in «Warren Street Hotel» is Available from $925 per night.
The Fifth Avenue Hotel
The first thought: You must have misheard! But no. The Gilded Age building of the Ohebshalom family actually stood empty for fifty years, serving only as a storage room. In the heart of Manhattan, on the corner of 28th Street and Fifth Avenue, a stone’s throw from the Empire State Building. Until his son Alex, a traveler with body and suitcase, decided: Let’s turn it into a hotel! One that doesn’t yet exist in New York. He showed foresight and commissioned the Swede who is now considered the hotel industry’s it designer: Martin Brudnizki. That was twelve years ago, mind you. Because that’s how much time and leisure went into the “Fifth Avenue Hotel” until it opened at the end of 2023 with a new glass tower.
Like the entire hotel, the rooms feel like a good friend’s cabinet of curiosities.
PD
A cabinet of curiosities that looks like the eclectic home of a good friend. After all, the late 18th century accommodation was originally a private home. Society lady Charlotte Goodride threw dinner parties here before the architects of Penn Station converted it into a bank in 1907.
The smell of grilled salmon with carrot and ginger sauce wafts through the former lobby, which now houses the fine dining restaurant “Café Carmellini,” all the way up to the balconies. Sound designers were hired to take care of the acoustics of the high-ceilinged room. However, the playlist is put together by just one person: the celebrated head chef Andrew Carmellini. He serves soul music from DJ King Tutt from the Bronx to accompany the French and Italian dishes. Because even though the flaneurs from turn-of-the-century Paris served as design inspiration, flea market finds are in the Chinese cabinets, and a butler greets guests with a welcome drink, there is a modern touch throughout the building that gives the “Fifth Avenue Hotel” its timelessness.
The “Portrait Bar” is decorated like a library.
PD
The works of art by up-and-coming artists and the fearless use of color also contribute to this: pink hallways here, pistachio-colored walls there. Brudnizki’s imaginative style is unmistakable, evident in the fringed cushions on brocade sofas, the tassel lamps with horse heads, the wallpaper with palm trees and flamingos, the mint-colored marble in the bathroom, the star-shaped lights above the bed. Everything is custom-made for the hotel. Style icon Diana Vreeland once said: “The eye has to travel!” So end the visual journey in the “Portrait Bar”, which is decorated like a library with its wood paneling and paintings. The drinks are inspired by cocktails from all over the world. Strolling for the advanced!
A double room in «The Fifth Avenue Hotel» is available from $895 per night.
This article is part of the NZZaS publishing supplement “Travel” appeared.
Travel newsletter
We send you the best articles about travel and discovery from «NZZ Bellevue» once a week by email.
Subscribe for free
