We now present you with our VIP Hotel Reviewer Series in which we hand-pick experts in the travel and media worlds and beyond to tell us what are their favorite hotels and why. Once a week, we'll feature a hotel review from said VIPs about their favorite leisure or business hotels. Pay attention: These VIPs are experts at what they do and they don't mess around when it comes to their hotels.
As a sightseer, I love hundred-year-old palace hotels like New York's Plaza, Chicago's Blackstone, and San Francisco's Fairmont.
But as a historian, I recognize that luxury establishments made up only a tiny percentage of all hotels, and that most people stayed in more modest hostelries.
One of these, the Cosmopolitan Hotel on West Broadway in Manhattan, has been in business since 1851, operating in the same building and serving the same kind of middle-class clientele for more than a century and a half!
The rooms are small and the décor is modern, but it's in the same historic building that's pictured on a nineteenth-century trade card in my book. And you can't beat the Cosmopolitan for affordable accommodations in the stylish SoHo neighborhood.
We've been so wrapped up in covering the ongoing saga of Six Columbus we almost forgot that Jason Pomeranc has another property in the works in Manhattan: Smyth Tribeca. (His crew is also at work another downtown hotel: LES Thompson.)
The latest info we can dig up sets the opening date for the Smyth at Spring 2008, which is vague enough to change. The hotel is a bit different in that in addition to 100 rooms, it will also feature 15 condos on the top floors--that's the kitchen above--and an owners-only roof terrace. (Somebody call LaLo!)
The architects for the hotel half of the project are Brennan Beer Gorman, who also did the Mandarin Oriental at Time Warner Center and the Gramercy Park Hotel, and an underground bar and ground floor restaurant are also in the works.
We contacted Thompson Hotels to ask for more details on the property but haven't heard anything back yet. And the information line listed for the hotel didn't do much for us: it's just a voicemail box.
Last week we looked inside the Millenium Hilton's indoor-pool in downtown New York. This week we have some room photos to share with you.
But first, a little hotel history. The Millenium Hilton was blown out five years ago during the September 11th attacks but reopened again in 2003 after extensive renovations. Being next to the WTC site isn't exactly easy for the hotel. The Church street entrance is closed due to construction so guests are instructed to enter on the Fulton side. And most hotel rooms overlook the WTC site. Not quite an uplifting view.
But the hotel was bustling with guests during our visit (maybe due to the $199 special) and a hotel spokesperson informed us that up to 3/4 of the hotel's employees before the attacks returned to their jobs when the hotel reopened.
This is not quite a Viewlicious photo shoot since we took the shots ourselves but we did get a chance to get in the Mayoral Suite on the 55th floor, which is the smaller of the executive suites--the Governor's and the Presidential Suites being the larger ones. Plus, the views from this floor are amazing, especially the ones looking East. (See above taken from the 55th floor elevator lobby.)
We've also included some shots of a standard room on the 16th floor, for those of you who aren't mayoral enough for the suite.
While New Yorkers were watching the snow come down, hotel guests were also stuck inside, watching the blizzard ruin their travel plans from their hotel rooms. Some guests at the Millenium Hilton in downtown New York over the weekend wrote on FlyerTalk about the experience. Apparently, room 5308 is the best for blizzard watching and other things:
I've managed to get this room a few times, including this past Saturday and Sunday night. Never seen a blizzard from 53 stories up before.
Another guest chimed in saying,
We had room 2702 on Saturday night, amazing view of the blizzard and Ground Zero. Seth, the doorman, somehow convinced a taxi driver to take us to Queens when our car service flaked out and no other cab drive would do it.
While guests were having fun blizzard watching, more than 40 hotel staff members were forced to spend the night a Marriott, in the city which was 80 percent occupied.
