Be seated.

For years the lobby at the Belleclaire bothered me.

The Belleclaire was the W of its day, as cool as they came in 1903. The hotel occupies a spooky/gorgeous brick and limestone pile architect Emory Roth appears to have dreamed up in a hallucinogenic haze. Carved Roman goddesses gaze down from the balconies. Mark Twain and Maxim Gorky signed the guestbook.

But times change. The hotel lost its cool, spiraled downward into the ranks of Single Room Occupancy and bubbled up as a budget hostel. In 2008 came a clean sweep. The Belleclaire refurbished its rooms (wood floors, red tufted leather headboards, new bathrooms), opened a fitness center and raised its aspirations (the rates went up, too). (more…)

New version: Metropolitan Ballroom

Every city that’s home to an election-night political candidate, from mayor to POTUS, has at least one hotel you’ve seen a lot even if you’ve never been inside.

The Sheraton New York Times Square, to use its new if slightly off-base name, is one of those hotels – or to be specific, the second-floor Metropolitan Ballroom. In the hotel’s 51 years this 15,000-square-foot expanse, way larger than most Manhattan apartments and capable of packing in 1,500 people without creating a fire hazard, has hosted countless balloon-filled election nights replete with candidates triumphant or tearful (and their equally countless triumphant or tearful supporters). In short, the Metropolitan Ballroom is, in hotel terms, a media star. (more…)

Not-so-heavy metal, 1970s style.

North by Northwest, one of my favorite movies, was on television recently. Which got me thinking about the United Nations General Assembly Building, a magnificent international style classic just seven year old when the movie was released in 1959. Which got me thinking about the Millenium UN Plaza, the once-gleaming, twin-towered hotel designed by architect Kevin Roche and planted across the street from the United Nations in 1976.

The 40-story hotel looked shopworn when I visited a while back. But that was then.  Last fall the hotel unveiled the $30 million renovation of its West Tower consisting of 129 rooms, 25 suites and a new club for guests perched on the 30th floor.

To underscore the changes, the hotel slimmed down – and capped up — its name to become ONE UN New York, a less-corporate-sounding nod to its One UN Plaza address. I stopped by for a look. (more…)

In the hidden room.

A suite is supposed to have more than one room, but what about a secret room?

At first glance the Carlton’s new Speakeasy Suite consists of a freshly renovated bedroom outfitted with 1920s inflections like a Stickley bureau and an imposing sleigh bed upholstered in leather the color of that forbidden 20s brew, bourbon. (more…)

Louis Rigal murals — and a silver-leaf ceiling.

Less is more is rarely the first thought that leaps to mind when you enter the Park Avenue lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria. This massive expanse is one of the most superb examples of Art Deco design in town.

The deco is decorative – allegorical murals by French artist Louis Rigal, gilded ceiling reliefs of frolicking naiads and stags, a floor mosaic of the Wheel of Life made from 150,000 tiny tiles.

Still, there’s notably less to see than there was just a few months ago. While never a candidate for Hoarders, the lobby in its newly renovated incarnation is an emphatic if unexpected salute to Mies van der Rohe’s maxim.

To leap forward the hotel stepped backward, restoring the lobby to the original footprint on view when it opened in 1931.  (more…)

We love trade shows. For hotel buffs the annual International Hotel, Model + Restaurant Show at New York’s Javits Center is the Great Kahuna, a self-described hospitality show of shows unleashing a cornucopia of new, well, stuff.

Tucked deep within the rows of big-ticket items – towering refrigerators, 12-inch-thick mattress, even a couple of food trucks – we found five nifty gadgets their backers want to put in hotels. Remember, you (probably) saw them here first.

(more…)

Party in the ballroom.

Bill Cunningham, sporting his signature blue jacket, strode in just ahead of us, a Nikon slung around his neck. Proof positive that there was to be no shortage of social glitter at the launch party for Sirio Maccioni’s new Sirio Ristorante at The Pierre last night.

In the hotel foyer a phalanx of Hollywood-cute staffers in white shirts and black ties collected coats and bags. Opposite them a long line of twenty-somethings in black cocktail dresses wielded guest lists as thick as September Vogue and checked off names.

Men in suits and women in stilettos mobbed the Pierre’s mural-lined rotunda, where photographers snapped Tony Bennett, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Martha Stewart and other knowns and lesser-knowns against a white backdrop. Guests poured into the ballroom, a marble staircase up, where no fewer than three open bars awaited. They filled the evening’s raison d’etre, the swanky-sleek Italian restaurant commanding the long ribbon of space most recently occupied by Le Caprice, an outpost of the plush London brasserie that never quite caught on here. (more…)

Leggy desk.

It takes a certain bravura for a hotel to name its rooms Spectacular, Fantastic and WOW.

W hotels have done this for over a decade, of course. Still, one person’s WOW is another’s meh. And what happens when age sets in, as it inevitably does? Nothing looks as forlorn as a trend-conscious hotel pushing ten without a facelift or, at the very least, fresh clothes and make-up.

A year ago W Union Square perched on this slippery slope. Its restaurant looked worn (we spotted a large rip in a leather banquette). Its guest rooms sported the dark woods and muted trappings that personified SoHo chic, ca 2000.  But that was 2011.

To celebrate its 12^th birthday this year W Union Square renovated big time – rooms, restaurant, banquet hall, nightspot, the works (the Living Room, aka lobby seating area, still stuck in the millenium, is up next). (more…)

On the waterfront: Wythe Hotel.

The coolest thing about the Wythe Hotel – a place that prides itself on cool – is its sense of place.

Winking at Brooklyn’s manufacturing past, the hotel occupies a red brick building that began life in 1901 as a cooperage making barrels and casks. The boards sported by guest room ceilings and platform beds were harvested from the building. And the front door to each of the 72 rooms boasts a plaque that says Manhattan or Brooklyn – a verbal preview of the only-in-Brooklyn view.

Such touches all but scream Williamsburg, the hipster neighborhood where the Wythe occupies a prime piece of waterside turf.

If The Carlyle channels the Upper East Side and The Standard personifies the Meatpacking District, the Wythe is neo-Williamsburg unfiltered. (more…)

A red room at the new Pod 39.

In early 2011 we spent a night at the Pod Hotel on East 51^st Street in one of the tiniest rooms on the planet. But what our little cell lacked in size it made up in style and smarts.

Like a sleek burr puzzle, everything fit meticulously – storage drawers tucked beneath the built-in double bed, a tissue holder perched under the stainless steel sink, a sliding door to afford privacy for the stall shower and toilet. With white walls, honey maple woodwork and splashes of red, the room was upbeat, contemporary and clean.  It looked like a blueprint for a smart budget hotel room.

Turns out it was. This summer a second Pod opened 12 blocks south in the century-old brick

Bunking at the new Pod.

tower that once housed the Allerton, a residential hotel for men.  Rooms are typically 10 by 8 feet (it’s the Pod, not the Pierre). But unlike the original where half the rooms use shared bathrooms down the hall, all Pod 39 rooms have private baths.

Rooms are also color coded, floor by floor, with white-walled rooms accented in red and honey maple “to energize,” according to the press release, blue and darker maple to sooth or teal and walnut for visual warmth.

Who dreamed up this look? And can space-starved apartment-dwellers try this look at home? We caught up with Vanessa Guilford, in-house design director for BD Hotels, who designed both Pods as well as the snug little cabins at The Maritime. (more…)