Knave -- as it was.

Talk about a double whammy. First came the news that Le Parker Meridien’s new next-door neighbor will be a new 296-room boutique hotel.  Then yesterday morning the new neighbor invaded Parker Meridien’s turf.

As guests sipped espresso and nibbled croissants at the hotel’s stylish Knave cafe just before noon, liquid concrete from the new building broke through the wall and flooded the room.

The “concrete lava” was up to a foot deep and moved tables and chairs, according to witness reports in The New York Post.  As stunned guests fled, construction workers rushed in with wheelbarrows to remove the invasive material.

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What the Titanic survivors saw.

On Sunday the Titanic Memorial Cruise left Southampton, England for New York City tracing the path of the doomed luxury liner that sank on April 14, 1912.  The 1,309 passengers, ranging from relatives of survivors to Titanic groupies, paid from $4,445 to $9,320 for the 12-might cruise.

It’s a lot cheaper to check into The Jane hotel where rooms start at $99 a night. And the Titanic connection runs deep.

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The Four Seasons.

Not long ago Trip Advisor posted its crowd-sourced list of the top hotels in the US. New York City fared badly with not one property in the top 25.

Another day, another survey. AAA has released its 2012 list of  Five Diamond hotels and restaurants, and New York City cleaned up with eight hotels and one hotel restaurant landing the coveted diamonds, the goldest star AAA’s professional raters award. Only Las Vegas scored higher in the hotel category, with a nod for ten properties. (more…)

We don’t know whether to be befuddled or embarrassed. We’re pretty partial to New York City hotels, but not a single one – not one! – landed on Trip Advisor’s annual Travel’s Choice list of the 25 Best Hotels in the World list published yesterday.

New York did better last year, when the city offered fewer rooms but apparently played to more enthusiastic Trip Advisor users.  Though none made the cut for the top 25 international hotels in 2011, the plucky Casablanca in Times Square rolled in at number eight for best in the US. Alas, it – and every place else here in town – was shut out of that list this time. (more…)

The Matilda

She’s the long-time mascot of the Algonquin Hotel, the coolest hotel cat in town. But when we stopped by the hotel yesterday, the only Matilda we saw was this drink – a golden $20 concoction of tangerine vodka, Cointreau, fresh lemon and orange juices and Korbel Brut named for the Algonquin’s fabled feline.

As reported in the New York Post, Matilda the cat was banished from the hotel’s clubby lobby lounge where she – and her nine predecessors – sauntered silkily among the sofas and club chairs and occasionally, when the mood struck, cozied up to guests. Though a cat has had the run of the Algonquin’s public spaces since 1932, when the staff took in Rusty, an orange tabby who drank milk from a champagne glass, the hotel reined in Matilda following a nudge from the city’s Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, which deems it unhealthy to allow animals in restaurants. (more…)

Hotel Americano -- one of the year's new hotels.

It isn’t just our imagination that a new hotel opens in New York almost every week. This week Major Michael R. Bloomberg announced that by the time 2011 departs New York City’s hotel room tally will reach 90,000 – a 24 percent increase over 2006.

And the building boom continues. Over the next two and a half years, a spate of new hotels will deposit an additional 7,000 rooms on the market. Among them are the Conrad, opening in January in the former Embassy Suites Battery Park, the Willow Hotel group’s 120 West 57, the Park Hyatt across the street at 157 West 57^th Street, the Four Seasons Downtown, and the Residence Inn and Courtyard by Marriott combo to be housed in a 68-story tower – the city’s tallest hotel – on West 54^th Street and Broadway. And that’s just in Manhattan. (more…)

Congress can’t agree on much. But a new piece of legislation regarding hotels could bring the two sides together at least momentarily.

Introduced today by Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md) and Congressman C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md), the legislation would create a program that allows Americans to donate hotel reward points to members of the Armed Forces traveling to receive health care and to their visiting families. The proposed program, Hotels for Heroes, complements the national Hero Miles program that provides free round-trip flights through donated miles for wounded soldiers recovering at military or veterans’ medical centers as well as their friends and families. (more…)

Ritz Carlton lobby -- closed temporarily by Hurricane Irene.

And a most unwelcome guest she is.

Flooding concerns in low-lying areas of Manhattan prompted several hotels at the island’s southern tip to close this weekend for city-mandated evacuation, including the Ritz Carlton New York Battery Park, the Andaz Wall Street, the New York Marriott Downtown and the tiny Wall Street Inn. And just like that, more than 1,000 hotel rooms dropped off the city’s radar.

Fortunately, no homeless guests have been reported. New York hotels are rarely at 100 per capacity in the waning days of August, particularly business hotels near Wall Street. The Andaz, Ritz Carlton and Marriott are affiliated with hotels uptown (phone calls to the Marriott Downtown were routed to the Marriott Marquis, the Times Square behemoth).

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The Barbizon today, aka Barbizon 63.

Update: On April 18, 2012, the Barbizon became an official New York City landmark — number 127 — following a decision by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

New York boasts no shortage of thriving historic hotels, from the Pierre and the Algonquin to the Waldorf=Astoria. But the casualties on the ghost list can be almost as noteworthy, even on occasion, newsworthy.

Consider the fabled Barbizon Hotel for Women. An up-market version of the Footlights Club in Stage Door, the city’s premiere single-sex hotel flourished through the mid 20^th century as the ultimate career girl sorority house where anxious parents parked white-gloved daughters aspiring to be models, actresses, writers and secretaries.

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Hotel Chelsea lobby, July 2011.

Today we say good-bye to the fabled Hotel Chelsea, or at least the high-profile bohemian flophouse we knew. On July 31st, at the stroke of midnight, the hotel that housed Virgil Thomson, Sid Vicious and Viva closed its doors to overnight guests, and its future as a hotel is unclear.

It is believed the building has been sold to developer Joseph Chetrit, who numbers the newly stylish Empire Hotel among his properties. In recent weeks, word spread that the hotel would close for a year for deep-dish renovations, (more…)