What makes us an art hotel
Every suite was designed with William Engel, a Chelsea artist, and none of them repeats. That's the whole idea. You don't get a standard room with a print on the wall; you get a room where the colour, the layout and the furniture were worked out one suite at a time.
Your suite is a living work of art. You also sleep in it, cook breakfast in it and leave your shoes by the door, which is the point. We'd rather you live with the work for a few nights than walk past it in a gallery.
What the suites actually look like
Bold colour against monochrome walls. That's the thread that runs through the house, and it shows up differently in every room.
- King Studio: blue feature walls, a navy accent behind the king bed, a sofa and lounge chairs. One layout has a marble fireplace with armchairs in front of it and a dining table by tall windows. At 334 square feet it's one room that reads as one room, with a kitchenette that handles real cooking.
- Queen Studio: a teal accent wall, sculptural pendant lights and a mirrored wall that makes about 215 square feet feel like more. The kitchenette has a two-burner cooktop, microwave, toaster and proper cookware.
- Standard Queen Room with Balcony: a green accent wall and a glazed door out to a small balcony over East 39th Street, which is a rare thing in Midtown.
We write the colour into the room descriptions because it's deliberate. It's a 1920s building and we let it be a loud one.
The building: a 1920s club for Williams College
We're two Beaux-Arts brownstones joined into one, built in the 1920s as a private club for Williams College. Six floors, and the building hasn't been smoothed out since. Floors aren't perfectly level everywhere and the proportions are those of a townhouse, not a tower.
That history is where our name comes from, and it's why the place feels like a house rather than a lobby with rooms above it. This is New York, made residential.
The Raines Law Room, downstairs
The Raines Law Room is our ground-floor cocktail bar, with its own door on 39th Street. Cocktails are made one at a time, so the list stays short and the room stays quiet enough to hear the person across the table. Think velvet chairs, a fireplace, low light and a chandelier.
It's open Monday to Thursday 5pm to midnight, Friday 5pm to 2am and Saturday 4pm to 2am. Sunday is the one night the room rests. Resy takes reservations, or call +1 646-837-6776 if the night looks full. The Raines Law Room does craft cocktails right.
Art you can walk to
The Morgan Library & Museum is the one we'd send you to first. It's at 225 Madison Avenue at East 36th Street, three blocks down Madison from us. It started as J. P. Morgan's private library, opened as a public institution in 1924, and now holds roughly 350,000 items: manuscripts, letters, music, books and drawings. The main building is Charles Follen McKim's; the glass entrance is Renzo Piano's. Go for the original library rooms, then see what's on in the galleries.
The New York Public Library's main branch at 476 Fifth Avenue is a short walk west, on the Bryant Park side of Fifth. Carrère and Hastings designed it, and it opened in 1911. Its Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs is a research collection, so treat it as a library, not a museum. For most visitors the art is the building: the Rose Main Reading Room and Public Catalog Room are city interior landmarks.
Chelsea is where William Engel works and where much of New York's gallery scene sits. Openings change every week, which is exactly why we don't print a list here. Our Culture Curators know what's worth seeing this week and can get you into it. Let me know what you're after and I'll point you toward the real version of it.
What we're not
We're 33 suites, not 300. There's no big gym and no restaurant beyond the Raines Law Room. Some suites keep a kitchenette, and laundry is on site, so a longer stay works. If you want a pool and a spa, we're the wrong house. If you want a room nobody else has, with a serious bar downstairs and Bryant Park a few blocks away, we're the right one.