Terry Trucco

The New York Hotel You’ve Never Heard Of That Inspired Georgia O’Keeffe’s Skyscraper Paintings

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On a recent visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I chanced upon Georgia O’Keeffe’s panoramic painting from 1928 of the East River. A muted geometry of belching factory smokestacks and brackish water, it’s the elegant, if downbeat, work of an artist becoming visibly disillusioned with urban life, a good-bye-to-all-that rendering of the city she’d soon abandon.

But what really caught my attention was the title “East River from the Shelton Hotel.” Read more

Terry Trucco

Sofitel New York Salutes the 2019 Tony Awards with Lobby Photos, a Tony Awards Suite, a Cher Show Suite and More

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The 2019 Tony Awards unfurl Sunday, April 9, yielding eagerly awaited answers to pressing questions: Hadestown or Tootsie? Oklahoma or Kiss Me Kate? And what about Jeremy Pope, who’s nominated for Best Leading Actor in a Play (Choir Boy) and Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Ain’t Too Proud)?

Sofitel New York doesn’t have the answers (yet). But their lobby, decked out in full Tony regalia through June 10, is a great place to put yourself in the mood for the Tonys if you don’t have a ticket for the big show at Radio City Music Hall. Read more

Terry Trucco

W Downtown Dresses Up Their Bar With Art By Their Newest Artists In Residence

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The fifth floor Living Room at W Downtown boasts a showpiece ceiling, an attention grabbing sculptural canopy of Calatrava-style ripples. It even changes colors. But since the introduction of the hotel’s Artist in Residence program in December 2018, the ceiling is getting serious competition from the room’s charcoal walls, or to be precise, what’s hanging on them. Read more

Terry Trucco

Celebrating Winter: These Four NYC Hotels Are Going All Out for “Game of Thrones” in Its Final Season

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It may feel like spring, but winter is here. Or for Game of Thrones fans who are keeping score, 67 episodes down, 6 to go.

The fantastical Westeros saga returns to HBO on April 14 for its final chapters. Lannisters! Targaryens! Dragons (dead and alive)! These four New York City hotels are toasting all things Thrones with a mix of viewing parties, themed drinks, trivia contests and deals for guests looking to take in the action from someplace other than the living room couch. Read more

Terry Trucco

Which New York City Hotels Were Featured in the Green Book?

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In the Academy Award winning movie Green Book, pianist Don Shirley and his driver, nightclub bouncer Tony “Lip’ Vallelonga used the titular guide book to find places that served black travelers during Shirley’s 1962 concert tour of the Deep South.

From 1936 to 1965, the The Negro Motorist Green Book, later The Traveler’s Green Book, provided a no-frills listing of restaurants, hotels and services like garages, beauty parlors and barber shops throughout North America where black travelers knew they would be welcome and safe.

That included New York City, home to Green Book author Victor Hugo Green (1892-1960), the African American postal employee, and later travel agency owner, who created the guide. Indeed, the first edition, priced at 25 cents, focused on the New York area, where Green lived. Read more

Terry Trucco

Seven Stylish NYC Hotel Bars for Watching the 2019 Oscars with Cocktails and a Crowd

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OscarFor the first time in over three decades, the Academy Awards won’t have a host when ABC broadcasts the show this Sunday, February 24 at 8 p.m. Sounds like anything can happen. What better time to drink in the annual display of theatrics, tears and dresses with cocktails and a crowd?

These New York hotel bars are serving up drinks, big screens, a party atmosphere, even prizes. Popcorn, too, if you’re lucky.

 

 

 

 

Read more

Terry Trucco

At The Quin Hotel, “The Slim Aarons Exhibition” Serves Up Photos of Beautiful People in Beautiful Places

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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

Terry Trucco

Meet “Naughty Angels,” An Art Show By Jimmie Martin That’s Making Mischief at The Surrey Hotel

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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

Terry Trucco

“American Gothic” Made Him Famous, But Grant Wood Also Created Art for Hotels

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Everyone knows artist Grant Wood (1891-1942) for his iconic depiction of a deadpan Iowa farmer, pitchfork in hand, standing beside a stern, yellow-haired woman wearing an apron. But did you know that in 1932, just two years after he painted “American Gothic,” Wood created a series of murals portraying Iowa farm life for a hotel coffee shop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa? Read more

Terry Trucco

$125,000 for a Second-Hand Door? Bidders Pay Dearly for 52 Original Doors from the Hotel Chelsea

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And to think they were destined for the dumpster.

On Thursday night, an auction was held for 52 original doors from the Hotel Chelsea that were discarded when renovation began in 2012 and harvested by a resourceful former homeless man. And prices shot through the proverbial roof.

To wild applause from bidders and onlookers in a packed Ricco/Maresca art gallery, a battered, whitewashed door to a room once occupied by singer/songwriter Bob Dylan sold for $125,000, eye-popping even for an item associated with a Nobel laureate. Read more