Four more new hotels in New York

/ Moxy Lower East Side

In October 2022, Moxy Hotels, the youthful Marriott brand, opened its Lower East Side branch in a street-corner setting among the old tenement blocks on the Bowery. Between the underground nightclub and rooftop lounge, there’s space in the new-build for a Japanese restaurant and 303 rooms, which pull off an upscale look with neutral colour palettes and semi-industrial fittings. Details: moxy-hotels.marriott. com

/ Hard Rock Hotel

It’s strange that it took until 2022 to open a Hard Rock Hotel in the home of the Velvet Underground, Kiss and the Ramones, but perhaps it was waiting for the perfect venue. Well, here you’re less than 200 metres from the lights of Times Square, on 48th St – NYC’s fondly remembered “Music Row”. The 446 rooms go from smart numbers in navy blue and dark wood to the 36th-floor penthouse Rock Star Suite.

Details: hardrockhotels.com

/ Radio Hotel

It used to be a bold choice to base yourself in Washington Heights, a half-hour subway ride from Midtown but still (just) in Manhattan. The main obstacle – a dearth of hotel options – has now been remedied with this asymmetric Lego-style tower, looking over Highbridge Park to the Harlem River. Community links show in the restaurant’s Dominican cuisine and the colours that echo local shopfronts in its loft-style rooms.

Details: theradiohotel.com

/ Casa Cipriani

To the handful of hotels between Wall Street and Manhattan’s southern tip, you can now add an indulgent eccentricity. The Battery Maritime Building, a colonnaded Beaux Arts landmark from 1909 that’s still a working ferry terminal, hosts on its upper floors a 47-room hotel. With mahogany furnishings and fine Italian linen, even the rooms not facing the harbour feel like the first step on an ocean liner voyage.

Details: casacipriani.com

Cocktail hour

Clockwise from above: The Aman’s Jazz Club; Interior, the welcoming Bar Lounge; the Garden Terrace is open year-round.

that appear to dance on a series of reflective pools. Rooftop patios such as this are bona fide unicorns in Manhattan – it’s certain to be one of the most sought-after spots in town when it finally opens, on a reservation-only basis, to outside guests.

The terrace is itself a triumph of architecture, with a retractable glass roof ready to combat the vicissitudes of New York winters, while ingenious bronze lattice walls mean that diners and drinkers may gaze out towards Central Park, but those in neighbouring skyscrapers cannot see in.

Perhaps the best bit hides beneath the Crown, though. In its basement, the hotel’s slick, Prohibition-style Jazz Club – part-recording studio, part-concert venue – pays testament to Aman’s deep pockets and still-deeper ambition. During my visit, I’m treated to a show by the singer and trumpeter Brian Newman, Lady Gaga’s charismatic band leader and frequent collaborator, who will be a regular performer here.

“This is a venue built by musicians for musicians, and the sound is incredible,” Newman says afterwards over a cocktail. “You have the attributes of a grand venue like Radio City Music Hall or Jazz at Lincoln Center, but in an incredibly intimate space. It’s the best nightspot that’s opened in the city in a long time – a genuine game-changer.” The club will be open to the public, with reservations only but no cover charge.

Back among that lofty garden terrace’s bonsai trees and ornamental pools, with the sun slipping down 5th Avenue far beneath me, I begin to feel as though I am on an island retreat – only a vertical resort, rather than a horizontal one, as Gathy describes it. New York has never felt so tranquil.

And it’s a sought-after feeling in this city, hence the elite price tag. It’s easily the most expensive hotel in New York, but on an even footing with other Aman properties such as Amangiri, in the remote Utah desert. It was in 1968 that Joan Didion described New York as “a city only for the very rich and the very poor”, but that still stands today.

At more than twice the average monthly mortgage payment in the US, the nightly room rate will put this Aman out of reach for most. A ridiculous indulgence? Perhaps. But if an urban hotel such as this was going to turn up anywhere, it was either going to be Billionaire’s Row in New York City or Beverly Hills in Los Angeles – which, it turns out, is exactly what Aman plans next.

Jonathan Thompson was a guest of the Aman New York (amannewyork.com). For ideas on what to do in New York see nycgo.com. CT