Islands of Style in a Sea of Grit
The New York Times
Published: Oct 12, 2008
THERE was a time when many of us flocked downtown because it was the place where bizarre club kids, oddly seductive poet-drunks and scary-cool experimental theater types went. Now downtown is a glossy lifestyle magazine come to life, a place where tourists go to track down that “authentic” street used in a fashion shoot or in last week's episode of “Gossip Girl.”
It is also increasingly a place where shiny designer hotels have been popping up with almost improbable frequency, many of them in places you'd least expect: between tenements on the Lower East Side, above abandoned railroads along the Hudson River and along grubby streets where meatpackers once worked by day and transgendered hookers turned tricks at night.
Turn a corner and you'll see a glassy, cocktail-flowing lobby that wasn't there yesterday, full of happy, trendily dressed people who seem to fit right in. Who are they? Foreign shoppers delirious with the exchange rate? Fanatical “Sex and the City” followers? Delusional investment bankers out for a last hurrah?
Here are some of the newest downtown hotels, some hot, some not so hot, where you can get up close to the gritty neighborhood, but behind glass, holding a pomegranate martini.
THOMPSON LOWER EAST SIDE
The 22-story Thompson LES is still under construction but began accepting guests in August. Developed by Jason Pomeranc, whose stylish boutique chain includes 60 Thompson, the hotel has a black and smooth facade that looms over the still-grungy neighborhood like a chic shoebox.
When I arrived on a rainy Thursday, two strapping men with catalog-model good looks stood guard over the glassy lobby, a minimalist cliché that somehow felt new next to the Domino's Pizza and a public housing project. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah was playing, and everyone was very excited to say hello. I shared the elevator to the 11th floor with a crew of Australians who complained loudly about how their “shoot” was canceled because of the weather.
My roomy standard was modern and vaguely industrial, like an upscale hotel's vision of a downtown loft, with exposed concrete, midcentury knock-off furniture and a bedside orchid. But it was the wall-to-ceiling views that impressed me the most. Floating above the rent-controlled tenants of Allen Street — and probably paying as much for just a single night ($500) — I felt as if I had joined the corporate “creative class,” a director of, say, Nike commercials with three BlackBerrys in my Burberry.
The fantasy was sometimes hard to sustain. Although the hotel had been opened one month, muffled hammering and drilling could be heard while the pool, gym, spa, bar, restaurant and chunk of the 141 rooms were being completed.
Still, the hotel offered nice touches. The evening turndown came with little brownies, and the gray-granite bathroom was stocked with travel-sized Kiehl's. The minibar was also well-stocked — with nuts, M & M's and a “Kiki de Montparnasse Sensuality Kit,” which contained two silk strips of fabric with handcuffs printed on them, a small vibrator, condoms and silicone lube for the very unerotic price of $195.
In the morning, I woke up cuffs-free but transfixed by the silent panorama of downtown Manhattan. After a rinse in the glass-enclosed shower, I went to the 15th floor, where a temporary breakfast buffet had been set up in a sun-drenched suite. Five guests who looked like VH1 executives were nibbling on baskets of fruit, coffee, tea and flakey pastries. No one said a word. It felt like the waiting room for a plastic surgeon.
I took my coffee to the balcony, which seemed to hover like a helicopter over the old water towers, bent antennas and tar beaches. On one rooftop, the word “Heroin” was lovingly scrawled in cursive — something “authentic” and “downtown” for future Thompson LES guests to enjoy.
HOTEL EAST HOUSTON
If the Thompson is like a towering supermodel, the Hotel East Houston is its shorter, homely sister. Housed in a renovated, six-story brick building at the corner of Eldridge and East Houston Streets — arguably one of the noisiest blocks on the Lower East Side — the hotel suggested a discount chain you may stumble upon in some charmless European city like Geneva or Calais.
My third floor “deluxe” was taken up mostly by the king-sized bed, making it difficult to open the built-in wardrobe. It felt more like a hastily renovated apartment than a thought-out hotel: the walls were charm-free white, a narrow desk was shoved along one wall, and a tangle of wires was stuffed under the flat-screen TV. When I tugged at the blinds for more light, it ripped out of its brackets and came flying down.
I went down to the lobby to tell the staff about the blinds — just so they knew I wasn't trying to destroy the room like a rock star. The desk attendant apologized, but never offered to repair them. While I was down there, I watched as other guests complained: one couple had a leaky shower, and a stern businessman asked for ice and glasses to be delivered a second time.
The Four Seasons this was not, but then again, my room was just $279, which borders on cheap for a neighborhood that now has a Whole Foods Market.
THE JANE
The Lower East Side may be reaching its hotel saturation point, but that pales in comparison with the meatpacking district, where the still-fresh Hotel Gansevoort, Maritime Hotel and Soho House will soon be dwarfed by the 330-room Standard Hotel by André Balazs, scheduled to open in 2009
Right now the neighborhood buzz is about the Jane, a 200-room “micro hotel” that is still being renovated by Sean MacPherson and Eric Goode, night-life entrepreneurs known for hot spots like the Waverly Inn and the aforementioned Maritime.
Housed in a neo-Classical red-brick structure from 1908, the Jane abuts the Hudson River and originally housed sailors (and, later, Titanic survivors), though the cabinlike rooms were more recently used as single-room-occupancy housing for the poor and homeless. About 90 of them remain and, according to the hotel's public relations rep, are “welcome to stay,” although rising rents may make that difficult.
When I booked a room in early September, only 20 of the 200 rooms were ready (about 62 more are set to open in the weeks ahead, and several with private baths that go for roughly $250 a night will most likely be ready by January). In the interest of reporting, I opted for a tiny “standard” cabin with shared bathrooms for the bargain rate of $99.
I arrived on a muggy Friday, and the hotel felt far from finished. The previous name, Hotel Riverview, was still on the red canopy, and the dingy lobby looked like the set of a 1970s Al Pacino film, with the front desk shielded behind a Plexiglas window. Things brightened on the fifth floor, however, where my room was located. The narrow hallway had been remodeled with antique lamps, brass door plates and vintage carpets, and I got the sense of where this hotel was headed: its ghostly past.
My room was a mere 50 square feet, but could have passed for a luxury train cabin: wood paneled and designed to use every inch of space. There were shelves under the twin bed, a fan affixed to the wall, and an air-conditioner lodged above the narrow window. I couldn't find the remote control to the small television, but it didn't matter: everything was within arm's length.
The communal, unisex bathroom was at the end of the long hallway. As I went to brush my teeth, I noticed that my door, like that of other hotel guests, was a dark wood, while the tenants' were painted gray. I wanted to meet one of them, but only glimpsed a grizzled guy in his 50s, ambling back from the bathroom, clad in a towel. Or was it a ghost?
Another resident had his door cracked open, his TV blaring. Passing by, all I could see were clothes hanging from the ceiling and I smelled the dull odor of someone who smoked lots of cigarettes and had a compromised liver.
I expected the lavatories at Penn Station, but when I finally made it, I was pleasantly surprised to find the bathroom clean and orderly, with shiny black-and-white checkerboard tiling, a marble slab counter inset with porcelain sinks, and no overpowering disinfectant odor. Walking back to my room, I felt a little spooked — as if there were spirits wandering the halls — but I suspect this was intentional.
GILD HALL
Wedged deep in the caverns of the financial district, the 126-room Gild Hall evokes a more recent past — of Wall Street during its gilded heyday, which, I guess, ended last month.
Another addition to Mr. Pomeranc's boutique hotel chain, Gild Hall evokes a gentlemen's club, with a bright lobby furnished with tufted leather couches, deer antler lights and knotty-pine walls. When I arrived, the Scissor Sisters were playing, a cowhide rug was thrown on the white floor just so, and the staircase was lined with weighty fashion books and classics like Thackeray. It felt cool and English — like Prince William's bachelor pad.
I checked in on a Saturday afternoon, when much of Wall Street is deserted. My room, a “deluxe king” on the third floor, overlooked dim and narrow Platt Street. Furnished with handsome wallpaper and a burgundy-leather headboard, it felt like the studio apartment of a very clean and stylish graphic designer. The bathroom was small, but had modern gray tiles and a vanity mirror surrounded by a halo of diffused light that gives your eyes that cubic glimmer often seen in music videos.
The room felt cozy and inviting, but with no street views, cocktail lounge or sensuality kit, I wasn't sure what to do with myself. Luckily the hotel has little fitness centers on three floors. The one I visited — the size of what I imagine Mary-Kate Olsen's shoe closet to be — had a treadmill, Cybex Arc Trainer and shiny set of free weights.
Back in my room, I broke into the minibar for a post-workout Heineken. Around midnight, a huge wedding party returned from their reception and proceeded to slam doors until 5 a.m. The noise echoed through the silent canyons of Wall Street, and made me feel like a lonely business traveler, stuck in a strangely dead district longing for fun. I opted for two more Heinekens, a half bottle of merlot and fell asleep.
THE GREENWICH HOTEL
The following appears in the room manual at the Greenwich, a new luxury hotel in TriBeCa partly owned by Robert De Niro: “There is no experience that our concierge can't arrange. A few ideas to get you started: a day trip to the North Fork vineyards in a vintage Aston Martin; a custom blended fragrance by a master perfumer; a private cooking class on the finer points of Japanese cuisine.”
Wait: how did they know?
Every room is apparently unique. Mine had the look of an Aspen chalet, with yellow mosaic tiling, wood-paneled walls, a purple loveseat, carved wood ottoman and the hugest bed I have ever slept in.
After flipping channels on the gigantic flat-screen TV, my companion and I headed down to the lobby, which, on a recent Wednesday evening, was whisper-quiet. A parlor behind the reception felt like Marty Scorsese's library, with antique chairs and couches, carefully selected books (a guide to Naples, a huge Helmut Newton tome) and French doors that led to a lovely courtyard. We ordered two glasses of barbera d'Alba from a beautiful woman in clunky heels and paid $30.
In the basement, there were a well-equipped gym and the Shibui Spa. A wizened wooden door led to a streamlined bathroom with lockers, a Toto Washlet bidet-toilet that flushes, sprays and air dries, and two large bathing areas that had shower heads bigger than a 727 jet. On the other end was a huge, Japanese-style pool.
Returning to our room, we noticed the turndown service came with a mysterious Japanese toy-thing: a flattened piece of tissue paper that, when blown into, turned into a penguin-like creature.
Tomorrow, I would be back out in the real world, in my disheveled apartment with no bidet or someone to make my bed. But for at least another night, as I drifted off to sleep in an ocean of high thread-counts, downtown Manhattan had never felt so rich and inviting.
THE HOT AND THE HEAT-SEEKING
Thompson Lower East Side, 190 Allen Street, (212) 460-5300; www.thompsonhotels.com. From $395. A luxurious, glassy high-rise amid soot-stained tenement walkups.
Hotel East Houston, 151 East Houston Street, (212) 777-0012; www.hoteleasthouston.com. From $249. Modern if generic rooms on a very busy Lower East Side corner.
Gild Hall, 15 Gold Street; (212) 232-7700; www.thompsonhotels.com. From $400. A hip hotel that looks like an expensive den, wedged in the canyons of the financial district.
The Jane, 113 Jane Street, (212) 924-6700; www.thejanenyc.com. From $99. Tiny but stylish wood-paneled cabins.
The Greenwich Hotel, 377 Greenwich Street, (212) 941-8900; www.thegreenwichhotel.com. From $550. An upscale hotel for celebrities, or those who can afford to be near them.
COMING SOON
The Standard, 848 Washington Street; www.standardhotels.com. The latest from the bold-faced hotelier André Balazs. Around 100 of the 330 rooms could open by December.
Mondrian, 150 Lafayette Street; www.morganshotelgroup.com. This 270-room offshoot of the Hollywood original is expected to open in 2009.
Cooper Square, 25 Cooper Square, (212) 475-5700; www.thecoopersquarehotel.com. This 21-story glass hotel, which rises over the Bowery like a chic bottle of milky perfume, is expected to open Oct. 30.
© The New York Times. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
