The Quin is gifted with an easy glamour that seems built into its 1920s bones. What better backdrop for “The Slim Aarons Exhibition,” a lobby art show of photographs by the celebrated 20th-century photographer who made a practice of taking pictures of, as he aptly put it, “attractive people in attractive places doing attractive things?” Read more
If you’ve ever stopped by the art-filled Surrey Hotel on the Upper East Side, you’ve probably noticed Graffiti Armoire, a curvy legged, scrawl-covered antique chest that stands near a commanding Chuck Close tapestry portrait of Kate Moss.
The sassy black and white cabinet was created by the Swedish-born design team of Jimmie Karlsson and Martin Nihlmann, aka Jimmie Martin, and is usually closed. But for now, a door is flung open, revealing a slick chili pepper red interior and a glass shelf holding a distinctly uncherubic silver cherub checking his flip phone. Dubbed Cardinal NYC, he sports a cigarette, a red skullcap, a cross dangling from a heavy chain and wings. Read more
Hotels are embedded in our lives, and not just when we travel. They’re welcoming places, standing at the ready with a bar where you can meet friends, a lobby offering shelter on an inclement day and a restaurant that’s often one the best in town.
We attend weddings and conferences at hotels. Some of us have memberships in hotel gyms. As unofficial local landmarks, the best hotels exude a promise of glamour, adventure and serendipitous surprise. Walking home from my first job in New York, I often strolled through The Plaza. One day I whirled through the revolving doors with Mick Jagger. Read more
When my daughter was little she had a Harry Potter book with pop-up pictures of Hogwarts, Hagrid, Hermione and the gang that, truth to tell, I looked at more than she did. She’s still too young to drink legally, so people like me must be the intended audience for the latest twist in cocktail culture — the pop-up picture cocktail menu. Read more
A neighbor who knows I write about hotels recently invited me to her home. “My mother collected hotel demitasse spoons,” she said.
A Jazz Age actress and flapper, Mom liked to take tea at posh spots like the Ritz Carlton in Boston and New York’s Savoy Plaza. Read more
Nothing promotes time travel like a grand hotel. Step inside and you’re whisked to another era where you can imagine yourself trading stories with Winston Churchill or Grace Kelly, Cole Porter or the Duchess of Windsor, albeit with locally sourced menus and WiFi.
New York’s Waldorf Astoria is one of these full-throttle time machines. If walking into its soaring Art Deco lobby doesn’t deposit you in 1931 or 1945 or whatever 20th-century moment you crave, Waldorf Astoria, a new book by William Alan Morrison should do the trick (Arcadia Publishing; $21.99). Read more
Guests at five-star hotels expect a cushy bed when they’re tucked in for the night. Still, the vaunted Four Seasons mattress comes with an extra sprinkling of fairy dust. Read more
Reads on the Road
It’s no fluke that libraries are the go-to amenity at smart hotels. Books and travel go together like gin and tonic, airplanes and airports, pillows and pillowcases.
70 Park Avenue, a stylish hotel in a 1920s building south of Grand Central Station, is New York’s latest hotel to go literary but with a twist. Read more
Anyone who’s had the misfortune of sleeping on hotel sheets that were ripped or frayed knows that bed linens don’t last forever. Sixty washes constitutes a lifetime for a sheet.
But what happens to dead bedding when it’s banished from your hotel room bed?
Since 2011, discarded sheets from Marriott hotels throughout the U.K. have returned to the properties reconstituted as stylish laundry bags, hair dryer bags and newspaper bags. And now Marriott International announces the arrival of another second coming – limited edition tote bags created from recycled hotel sheets. Read more
Seems it was only yesterday we were reporting the arrival of the Semi-Automatic, the Hudson hotel’s cool vending machine. You may recall it as the one stocked with gold-plated handcuffs, Haute Hippie sequin miniskirts and Ouiji boards instead of Doritos and M & Ms.
But today when we visited the Hudson to check out Hudson Common, the newish beer and burger court, we got a shock. Strolling over to the Semi-Automatic to see if it was still selling Equinox Derringer bikes (for $2,300) or, more realistically, toothbrushes, we discovered it was gone. Had it been moved? Read more