Algonquin memorabilia.

You’d never know it to look at them, but the Marriott Marquis, a brute, 1980s John Portman behemoth, and the Algonquin, a demure, history-drenched Edwardian, share something besides easy proximity to Times Square.

This week the Algonquin became a Marriott hotel — sort of.

The unlikely bond comes courtesy of the Algonquin’s new affiliation with Marriott’s Autograph Collection, a new subset of Marriott International comprised of one-of-a-kind hotels that prize personality. The Algonquin, in business since 1902, has personality in spades. Long-gone literary lights like Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and Alexander Woolcott hung out here. Matilda, the hotel’s prize-winning cat, still does and is often underfoot in the lobby. (more…)

Fashion Week may be history, but designers haven’t stopped unveiling their newest creations. (more…)

The towering Waldorf=Astoria.

On a visit to the Waldorf=Astoria, we saw a notice for history tours of the hotel offered every Thursday and Saturday morning at 11:30.

Not many hotels boast sufficient history or chutzpah to warrant a tour priced at $50 a person (they do throw in lunch). Besides, the Waldorf devotes four bulging lobby display cases to memorabilia, from place settings for royal dinners to photos of illustrious guests, like Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy and Bruce Springsteen. What more could there possibly be?

We decided to find out. Besides, we’d always wondered why an equal sign connects the words Waldorf and Astoria.

On a recent Saturday morning, we joined the small group congregated around the main lobby’s Clock Tower, an enormous bronze crowned by a scaled down Statue of Liberty. Queen Victoria commissioned this elaborate concoction for the infamous Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 – remember The Devil in the White City? — a pertinent year because that’s when the original Waldorf Hotel was built. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. (more…)

The Waldorf=Astoria.

Given the blast of parties, press releases and popping champagne corks whenever a spa opens at a hotel, it’s amazing how quiet a closing can be. Consider the Guerlain Spa at the Waldorf=Astoria.

This 14,000-square-foot swathe of luxury opened in 2008 to kudos from spa-goers and critics alike. Each of the 16 treatment rooms boasted its own bathroom, shower and locker. And first-time guests received a footbath and massage while filling out health forms. (more…)

Fashion Week's home base.

New York Fashion Week unspools through September 16 in the big, gray cube planted temporarily next to Lincoln Center’s Metropolitan Opera House.  With over 100 designers strutting their Spring/Summer 2011 collections – and with more than a dozen new style-conscious hotels opening in New York this year – you’d think the two realms might overlap. And you’d be right.

Which is why we found ourselves elbowing our way into the Box, a midnight black runway room, for Andrew Buckler’s menswear show.

Buckler, a British designer known for eccentrically urbane designs aimed at cool, creative types, devised the cheeky uniforms – urban hipster meets Gangs of New York – sported by the staff at the new James Hotel, which opened September 1. (more…)

We find it really hard to get excited about a new banking product, even when there’s a hotel connection. But we can see the appeal of a new credit card that made its debut yesterday.

Use the Hyatt Chase Visa card just once, and you get two free nights at any Hyatt property in the world, including New York outposts like the shiny new Andaz hotels on Wall Street and Fifth Avenue. (more…)

The Hotel Pennsylvania.

Recently New York’s City Council approved plans for a new skyscraper to be built across the street from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station.

This being prime Midtown Manhattan turf, the plot at 15 Penn Plaza is, of course, already occupied.  And not by just any old high rise. The Hotel Pennsylvania resides in a columned McKim, Mead & White structure built to complement the original columned Pennsylvania Station that was torn down in 1963, a loss preservationists mourn to this day.

As we hadn’t visited the all-but-doomed Hotel Pennsylvania in a while, we decided to stop by and see what may soon be gone forever. (more…)