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Ian "Catatonic" Awaiting Gramercy Park Hotel Opening Day

Where: 2 Lexington Avenue [map], New York, ny, United States, 10010

The Gramercy Park Hotel press machine is in overdrive as they count down the few remaining hours to the hotel's much-anticipated opening tomorrow. Since we've been bringing daily updates for the past week, we felt obligated to put forth some of the latest, supposedly game-changing information about Ian Schrager's new hotel.

From the International Herald Tribune we learn that poetry calms Ian:

One day last week Ian Schrager e-mailed a poem by Rudyard Kipling to his employees. "It's the one that goes: 'If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs,'" he laughs ruefully. "At this stage in a project I feel so catatonic that I become almost stoic, because if I'm not calm, how can I expect anyone else to be?

Aside from Ian's dubious mental health, we learn that the hotel's massive chandelier is clad in "reclaimed douglas fir" lumber from Brooklyn (same as Schrager and design partner, artist Julian Schnabel). The hotel restaurant, Park Chinois, to be done by Alan Yau and a private rooftop club will open this fall, and the artworks found in the lobby will change every few months. Oh yeah and some of the furniture (presumably not the one from the Hyatt's furniture maker) was found in flea markets.

See what other "game-changing" info is out there:
· A Hotel Guru Changes Rooms [Time]
· Gramercy Makeover Goes Artsy [LA Times]
· Narcisco Rodriguez's Designs Check Into Gramercy [WWD]
· Looking ahead to Ian's next NYC Hotel, 40 Bond [Mad.co.uk]

Related Stories:
· Gramercy Park Hotel Coverage [HotelChatter]