Checking Into New York’s Hippest Hotels

I’m in a cab in New York, heading downtown, and I’m running late. The driver refuses to take the route I request, promptly getting us trapped in traffic on 7th Avenue, but I don’t complain or demand to be let out, for fear he’ll turn psychotic. * I do love New York, and my reason for being here: to check out some of the city’s most stylish new hotels, part of a wave of hip hotels nationwide that is making traditional lodging seem anachronistic. But the city is just too difficult to deal with today. All I want to do is get downtown alive and lock myself in a room at the Mercer, by all accounts the hippest, hottest new hotel in town. If it’s as good as I’ve heard, I may never come out.

Half an hour later, we reach the intersection of Mercer and Prince Streets, where the driver says there is no hotel. I know he’s wrong. I used to live three blocks east of the red brick building at 147 Mercer, constructed in 1890 for John Jacob Astor II; during its renovation, for at least a year, there was a sign in a window that read “Mercer Kitchen and Hotel Opening Soonish.” There’s no sign for the 75-room hotel on this day (as with many hip spots in New York, the management disdains calling attention to the place), but I know I have a reservation. So I get out and lug my bag up and down the sidewalk looking for the front door, finally opting for the entrance on Prince Street to the Mercer Kitchen, celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s newest restaurant in New York. Fortunately, the Mercer Kitchen yields to the hotel. (As it turns out there is a main entrance to the hotel on Mercer, but I missed it because there’s no number on it.)

The lobby is a small but handsome room with banquettes lining a window with a view of the SoHo branch of the Guggenheim Museum; cube-shaped armchairs and couches, African wenge wood tables custom-made for French designer Christian Liaigre, and a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf against one wall. The predominant colors are beige and gray, accented by the occasional purple orchid in the less-is-more style of Japanese ikebana. Suddenly, I’m feeling calmer.

I don’t spot any of the celebrities (Calvin Klein, Rupert Murdoch) who frequent the hotel. The four or five people I do see behind teacups and tall glasses of iced cappuccino are stylishly dressed, over 40, presumably well-to-do (brochure rates for doubles here start at $375 a night) and probably famous for something I obviously don’t know about. I try to act cool and uninterested, because if you want to fit in at the Mercer, that’s the way you need to act.

The young clerk at the reception desk, clad in a black-on-black uniform designed by Isaac Mizrahi, welcomes me with a warm but efficient air. He asks for my signature but doesn’t have me fill out a registration form, which streamlines the check-in process and makes clients feel a bit like invited guests. Then I ride in the elevator, with a bellboy carrying the key card and bags, to my sixth-floor room.

The first thing thing that strikes me is the arched Romanesque Revival window with a view of Mercer Street through Venetian blinds. Andre Balazs, who owns the Mercer (as well as the Chateau Marmont and the Standard in Los Angeles), has been careful to preserve many of the building’s turn-of-the-century features, such as the windows, high ceilings and expansive rooms and baths. But this is SoHo, home of downtown’s chicest galleries and design stores, so the furnishings are contemporary and spare: another cube-shaped couch, a big rectangular table and long bench (in designer Liaigre’s signature wenge wood), a glass-encased console for the CD player and TV, and a full-length free-standing mirror reflecting the king-size bed, which is covered by a linen duvet and crisp, white Italian-made sheets. Before he leaves, the bellboy shows me how to operate the dimmers that control the lights, which have artfully shaped shades by Herve Descottes.

Alone at last, I drink in the silence, take off my shoes and pad around the room, finding new things to beguile me everywhere: a mini-bar stocked by Dean & DeLuca; big 4-ounce bottles of shampoo, conditioner and body lotion by Face Stockholm; “Dr. Strangelove” and “La Femme Nikita” on the hotel’s video list; and a room service menu from the Mercer Kitchen. I ask for a grilled chicken sandwich, but the waiter talks me into a raw tuna and wasabi pizza instead. It comes in 10 minutes and is light years more delicious than I ever would have expected.

I have things to do--calls to make, articles to read, notes to organize--and vague plans to use the David Barton Gym around the corner (complimentary for hotel guests) before catching “The Blair Witch Project” at the Angelika Film Center up the block. But after the pizza, I sit down, feeling at once empty and complete, having arrived in a place that has been stripped down, not to the essentials, but to the luxuries. Nothing is lacking, or extraneous.

The Mercer, which opened last year, is a prime example of the sort of next-wave hotel that is the current fashion. Like Morgans, Royalton and Paramount (a sophisticated uptown trio created by Ian Schrager, currently the biggest independent hotelier in New York), as well as the Time, W New York and the nearby SoHo Grand, the Mercer is not your father’s hotel. Those chain hotels have rooms so predictably configured and furnished that you can walk from the bed to the bathroom without opening your eyes. These cooler-than-thou places are the opposite of the chains, with trendy restaurants in the lobbies instead of tired old coffee shops, and acute senses of self. Every lamp, pillow sham and table has been created by a high-profile designer working, largely but not exclusively, in a contemporary, minimalist style.

All stylishness aside, the hotels I’m talking about are hard to define, or even name. They’re most often labeled “hip” hotels, although Schrager, who is widely credited with inventing the species, hates the moniker. He also loathes the “minimalist” label, even though he introduced the style that has become the hallmark of these hotels by hiring the whimsical French minimalist Philippe Starck to design Royalton, which opened in 1988.

Most experts agree that the next-wave evolved from the boutique hotels that sprang up in New York, South Beach and San Francisco in the early 1980s. Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, which is headquartered in the Bay Area, says the boutiques were meant for niche markets: Each hotel was small in size, with an emphasis on service and a distinct personality. But as the species evolved, many boutiques got bigger, service sometimes flagged and style took over completely, to the point where it’s as if you’re choosing a way of life when you check into a hip hotel. You read in magazines about celebrity guests and big deals brokered in the lobbies, and see the rooms in the backgrounds of pictures of movie stars and fashion models. Pretty soon, you start to feel lucky to snag a room at the Mercer or the W and, like me, a little anxious about fitting in.

That’s a hip hotel in a nutshell. My apologies to Ian Schrager, but there’s no better name for it.

Some find them silly and uncomfortable, and see no reason to abandon their tried-and-true Hiltons. But for those of us who love hotels, and get a frisson of hope and joy every time we check into a new one, the advent of hip hotels is an invigorating development, putting some of the surprise and fun back in travel. Moreover, it seems as if another one opens every season in this city. Upcoming are Dylan in midtown (debuting in late fall); 60 Thompson in SoHo (due in February); the TriBeCa Grand, a little sister to the SoHo Grand, and the Bryant Park Hotel in the landmark American Radiator Building (both scheduled to receive guests in the spring); two more Ws in midtown by the end of the year and one in Union Square after that; and four more entries from Schrager in the next 36 months.

Schrager says that hotels are the nightclubs of the ‘90s. And he should know, since he and his late partner, Steve Rubell, owned the infamous, iconic Studio 54 disco in the 1970s. After serving 13-month prison terms for tax evasion, the twosome returned in 1984, scraping together enough cash to open Morgans, a stylish, intimate hotel with original photos by Robert Mapplethorpe on the walls and the white-hot Asia de Cuba restaurant next door. “At the time,” Schrager says, “the hotel industry was in ruins.

“ ‘The best surprise is no surprise’ was the old Marriott slogan. Steve and I thought exactly the opposite. There’s nothing better than a big surprise. It’s eyes open wide in our lobbies.”

*

My eyes are ready to pop when I see the W, the flagship of a new chain created by Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide. Starwood owns the Sheraton and Westin chains, and is making Schrager run fast and recapitalize even as Starwood incorporates lots of his ideas. I know the W because I once worked in the neighborhood. It used to be the old Doral Inn, and its location, on Lexington Avenue between 49th and 50th streets, was once one of the dowdiest blocks in midtown.

But not anymore, judging from the buzz around the two-story, glass-fronted porte-cochere knocked out of the Doral’s stolid brick facade by architect David Rockwell of Planet Hollywood fame. I drop my bag with the cute young doorman who, I later discover, was recruited from a modeling agency (no surprise since Schrager’s places are full of attractive people, moonlighting as clerks and bellboys between fashion shoots and acting gigs). There’s a juice bar along the street front and an alcohol bar, Whiskey Blue, across the foyer. Every time its door opens, I’m blasted by the sound of socializing and clinking glasses, so I push in, hoping for a celebrity sighting. This place is, after all, run by bar impresario Rande Gerber, who opened his first watering hole at Schrager’s Paramount hotel in 1990 and scored again with the Sky Bar in the L.A. Mondrian. Plus, he’s married to Cindy Crawford. (“She’s not much on bars,” he tells me later. “But she does like mine.”)

Eventually, I come to appreciate Rockwell’s simple but sexy Whiskey Blue design, with its distressed wood floors and photos of such jazz greats as John Coltrane on the walls. But at the moment, the place is so packed that I can’t see a thing besides boys in J. Crew chinos and girls in black spaghetti straps. I retreat to the reception desk, where I embarrass myself by gesturing for the young man in black standing nearby to go ahead of me in line. When he smiles quizzically, I realize he isn’t a guest; he’s a bellboy. It’s about 10 p.m. and lots of people are checking in, but not the 20-something partiers of Whiskey Blue. The hotel guests look like business travelers a decade or two older, advertising reps and fashion buyers, I surmise, clued in to the fact that the W is a cooler address than the Marriott next door.

I get my key card and wander into the marginally quieter lounge just off the lobby, where there’s another bar and a large, sunken living room that looks as though it could serve as the set for a play (architect Rockwell once worked in the theater and currently is designing the new home for the Academy Awards on Hollywood Boulevard). This lounge has a high bank of windows overlooking East 49th Street, interspersed with panels bearing the hotel’s ubiquitous leaf border. That border -- along with boxes of lush wheat grass, a muted green, beige and yellow color scheme, the juice bar and an excellent health club and spa -- attempts to carry out the W’s healthy, back-to-nature theme. There is a fireplace at the far end of the room, next to steps leading to Heartbeat, a restaurant run by Drew Nieporent (of Nobu, Montrachet and the Tribeca Grill downtown), with such good-for-you things on the menu as organic chicken and fried tofu.

I drop my purse onto a wooden cube (topped by an inlaid chess board) in the lounge and settle into an armchair next to a man in a suit, drinking brandy by himself and surreptitiously casing the room. A leggy young waitress comes by, and when I tell her I’m in dire need of a Belvedere martini, she pats me on the arm like a consoling friend. (The staff here is like that: familiar and eager to help, though not particularly polished.)

I consider talking to the man, but he seems rather uptight, as if he, too, is trying to figure out how to fit in. So I drink down my martini, give up the search for amusing company and call it a night, heading up to a double (brochure rates start at $289) on the sixth floor with windows overlooking an apartment house and parking garage.

There’s an entryway with a footstool, mirror and closet (containing an ironing board, hair dryer and cotton pique-and-terrycloth robe). Inside the room, the furnishings look as if they came from a Crate & Barrel catalog: A TV console, desk, upholstered chair and plump double bed are all in earth and wood tones with green accents. To make business travelers happy, high-tech amenities abound, such as TV Internet access, a two-line speaker phone and a sensor alarm clock with a CD player. That bed, however, is Room 632’s chief asset, with an enormous headboard, perfectly positioned overhead lights for reading, a voluminous duvet, mounded pillows and 200 thread-count sheets with printed borders enjoining guests to “walk with confidence, run with conviction, dance with spirit and sleep with angels.”

Unfortunately, the bed takes up most of the room, which is much too small, and the bath is no better. A radiator against the wall makes it impossible to fully open the bathroom door, meaning you can’t stand square in front of the vanity. Dim lighting above the mirror causes me to almost lose a dropped contact lens, and I’d like to take a hot bath, but there’s only a shower. (Who is telling New York hoteliers that guests don’t care about baths? They should take a note from Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica, where the deep, double-size tubs are a prime attraction.) I finally find a place to leave my makeup kit and toothbrush--on top of the toilet bowl, with the seat cover down. Then it’s lights out as I toddle off to bed, in search of an angel.

Later during my stay, I tour Paramount (where rooms start slightly higher than the average New York City room rate of $211) with Anda Andrei, design director for Ian Schrager Hotels. When I point out that many of the rooms at Paramount are small, and that counter space is limited (as at the W), she says, “People are willing to put up with certain things, for charm.” Which Paramount has in spades--a lobby with a haunted retro look, funny cone-shaped stainless steel sinks in the bathrooms, and big framed Vermeer prints serving as headboards, all from the wry, idiosyncratic brain of designer Starck.

Paramount seems the classic example of a hip hotel, with most of the features I’ve come to expect: a living room for a lobby, a restaurant meant to attract locals as well as travelers, head-turning decor and an atmosphere especially welcoming to suddenly flush twenty- and thirty-somethings (not to mention the occasional forty-something who likes to hang with the youngsters). Rande Gerber was in his 20s when Schrager convinced him to open his first watering hole, the Whiskey Bar, at Paramount, telling Gerber: “You’re the kind of person I want at the hotel.” The upscale Mercer aside, most hip hotels in New York are being designed for and marketed to the under-50 crowd, a wise move on the part of developers as older generations of business travelers retire.

Most were created by independent hoteliers (many of whom, like Emanuel Stern of the TriBeCa and SoHo Grands, started out in real estate). But now, as the chains are getting involved (Starwood plans 13 more Ws in New York, other U.S. cities and Sydney, Australia) and Schrager’s portfolio grows (he’ll be running 15 places by the end of next year, including St Martins Lane, which opened in London on Sept. 7), a statement by Jason Pomeranc strikes me as amusing but true: “The Schrager hotels and Ws will become the new Hiltons and Marriotts,” says the 28-year-old developer of 60 Thompson in SoHo. He has the good grace to add: “We owe it all to Ian. He has done for the hotel industry what Conrad Hilton did in the ‘50s, taking a disjointed aspect of life--travel--and making it comfortable.”

*

Am I comfortable at the Time, which opened in the spring on West 49th Street between 8th Avenue and Broadway (with doubles starting at $230)? Yes, I guess so. But comfort isn’t everything, or so I decide after staying there for two nights.

The hotel is managed by Vikram Chatwal, a self-styled hotelier/model and scion of the family that runs the budget Hampshire Hotel chain in New York. But the Time is different from the rest of the places in the chain because Chatwal got Adam Tihany--who revamped Le Cirque 2000, one of Manhattan’s most talked-about restaurants--to undertake the decor. The results are dramatic--and futuristic.

On the first floor, an icy glass and chrome bar yields to Palladin, a restaurant run by French chef Jean-Louis Palladin (of Jean-Louis at the Watergate in Washington, D.C., which closed in 1996). Palladin’s decor is warmer and more inviting than its entrance predicts, although judging from the empty tables at lunch and dinner, the inventive French cuisine hasn’t caught on yet.

To reach the small, understated second-floor lobby from the ground-floor entryway, I take a glass-encased elevator that looks as if it ought to be operated by “Star Trek’s” chief engineer (“Beam me up, Scotty”). When the elevator goes up, cartons of unbroken eggs are revealed at the base of the shaft, a little joke that Tihany calls his “homage a Philippe Starck.”

My sister, Martha, has come from Washington, D.C., to stay with me at the Time. She’s impressed by our room, but to me it seems unsurprising, arranged in the pattern set down by the chains, with two double beds against the left wall and a built-in desk against the right. There’s a window covered by a translucent screen, a curtained closet and an odd, tree-like fixture supporting a coffee pot, as well as long-necked contemporary reading lights, which tend to droop. The color scheme is monochromatic, except for the blue bedspreads. There are rooms with yellow and red spreads, too, equipped with vials of yellow, red and blue natural oils, intended by designer Tihany to inspire a response to the primary colors: yellow for energy, red for passion and blue for rest.

My sister and I go to the theater and dine at Palladin, and that night blue sends me into a seamless sleep. But the next morning I get red when the concierge can’t find a fax that’s come in for me, and a little yellow when an MTV crew, taping an interview with rap star Lil’ Kim, takes over the lobby. One of the front desk clerks persistently ignores me, and I don’t even bother to pocket the generic, house-brand toiletries.

Moreover, there’s nothing special about riding up in the elevator with two Long Island matrons in Bermuda shorts, who are excited about the Grey Line tour of the city they’ve booked for the next morning. Blame it on my failure to make the high school cheerleading squad, but I hate feeling like an average Joe. Unfortunately, that’s how I feel at the Time. It gets some elements right but misses the most crucial: generating the sense of style and excitement that makes guests know they’re in a hip hotel.

Herbert Ypma, author of the book “Hip Hotels,” has told me that there’s a word in French for the average Joe: plouk. “No one wants to be a Mr. Plouk,” he says, which seems to get to the heart of the matter. These new hotels are cool places, for cool people--never mind that most guests are just plain plouks when they shut the door and turn off the light.

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Who Stays Where

The Mercer: Rupert Murdoch, Calvin Klein, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gus Van Sant and lots of Brits.

Morgans: introverts and other people who want privacy; there’s no scene in the lobby, though there is one in the Asia de Cuba restaurant and in Morgans Bar, which attracts trendy singles.

Paramount: younger, less-flush travelers than at Morgans or Royalton, and Times Square regulars; the Mezzanine restaurant is a civil spot for dinner or a drink before the theater.

Royalton: top execs and writers, book and magazine editors.

SoHo Grand: people from “creative professions,” 40% from California; Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, as well as the Taco Bell dog.

The Time: business travelers, people from advertising and entertainment, tourists.

W New York: middle-level business travelers; Random House is around the corner, so the restaurant attracts publishing types; Whiskey Blue packs in young East Siders who had no cool place to hang in the neighborhood before it opened.

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Guidebook: Suite Dreams in New York City

Prices: Room rates are brochure rates for a double for one night. (Rates can drop during slow periods or under special sales promotions.)

Getting there: New York is a five-hour flight from Los Angeles. American, United, Delta, TWA, Continental and Tower all have nonstop flights to JFK and LaGuardia airports.

Where to stay: The Mercer, 147 Mercer St., telephone (212) 966-6060, fax (212) 965-3838, Internet https://www.themercer.com. Rates: $375 to $400.

Morgans, 237 Madison Ave., tel. (800) 334-3408 or (212) 686-0300, fax (212) 686-9401, Internet https://www.hotelbook.com. Rates: $295 to $340.

Paramount, 235 West 46th St., tel. (800) 225-7474 or (212) 764-5500, fax (212) 575-4892, Internet https://www.hotelbook.com. Rates: $250 to $275.

Royalton, 44 West 44th Street, tel. (800) 635-9013 or (212) 869-4400, fax (212) 575-0012, Internet https://www.hotelbook.com. Rates: $440 to $600.

SoHo Grand, 310 West Broadway, tel. (800) 965-3000 or (212) 965-3000, fax (212) 965-3200, Internet https://www.sohogrand.com. Rates: $274 to $424.

The Time, 224 West 49th St., tel. (877) 846-3692 or (212) 246- 5252, fax (212) 245-2305, Internet https://www.TheTimeNY.com. Rates: $230 to $400.

W New York, 541 Lexington Ave., tel. (877) WHOTELS or (212) 755-1200, fax (212) 319-8344, Internet https://www.whotels.com. Rates: $289 to $325. *

Left: N.Y. Industry coat, jackets, pants, v-neck; Agnes B. silk shell; Kenneth Cole shoes; Coach travel bag. Top right: Banana Republic tank top, Hanro panty, Agnes B. sandals; Banana Republic pajama pants. Bottom right: Hanro lingerie and Banana Republic pajamas. Styled by Kim Young; hair and makeup: Stephanie Parent; models: Nicola Rigg/Q and Jack Barley/Q.