By Terry Trucco

At a glance: Elegantly packaged elbow room could be the biggest luxury the Conrad New York Downtown offers.

In a city jammed with tight spaces and close quarters nearly everything about this atrium hotel – built in 2000 as an Embassy Suites and spruced up into a more upscale Conrad in 2012 – is expansive.

The lobby is airy and spacious; you could do cartwheels across the floor without bumping into anything. The rooms, all suites, start at 430 square feet. Even the artwork is grand scale – a 16-story rendering of Sol Lewitt’s Loopy Doopy, a feast of purple swirls plotted on a blue grid, marches up an entire wall extending from the lobby to the roof.

The renovation transformed a nice, middle-of-the-road chain hotel into a futuristic showpiece. Veil, Monica Ponce de Leon’s artful aluminum triangles suspended mid-air in an intricate network of webs, almost makes you forget you’re standing in a brute hotel atrium.

And an artfully placed collection of modern gray wool sofas turns the lobby into a collection of discrete spaces to meet up with friends, check your phone or have a drink (the bar adjoins).

With an outskirts-of-the-Financial District location and perks like a first-rate barber shop, the hotel is clearly designed for business people (Goldman Sachs owns the property). But the hotel is agreeable for families, too; the sitting area sofas in each suite are sleepers, and a Regal Cinemas multiplex adjoins the building.

Rooms: The suite we saw, styled in serene creams, grays and browns, felt like a businesslike, if compact, one-bedroom apartment with contemporary furniture and a hint of downtown style. (The weird  Embassy Suites windows that looked onto the atrium are gone.) You could hold a small business meeting in the sitting area (a glass door styled like a shoji screen slides shut to separate sitting and sleeping rooms). A flatpanel TV sits atop an ample desk opposite a velvet club chair, a cool mid-century-inflected coffee table and a sleek sleeper sofa.

Handsome built-ins abound. A wet bar is outfitted with a Nespresso coffee maker, a phalanx of glasses and a minibar. And in the sleeping area, the wall-mounted 42-inch flatpanel TV is part of a good-looking configuration of closets and drawers opposite the king-size bed. (The room was one of the lucky ones with a heart-pounding Hudson view.)

The bathrooms, encased in stone and marble, feature deep rectangular sinks and eco-friendly dual-flush toilets. A spacious, stone-clad stall shower merits a separate room.

Food and drink: Atrio, the hotel’s Mediterranean-inflected restaurant billeted in a chilly, white, retro-futuristic expanse off the lobby, serves breakfast, lunch, dinner, weekend brunch and desserts. During warmer months much of the produce on your plate comes from the hotel’s roof garden.

Leonessa, the stylish, 16th story roof bar, offers indoor and outdoor seating (the decor is inspired by the witty designs of Piero Fornasetti) and commands prime views of the Hudson River and Statue of Liberty. A warm-weather specialty is the Sgroppino made from Belevedere vodka, lemon sorbetto and prosecco and served with a spoon.

Amenities: The fitness center is large, well equipped and has a wall of windows (views are minimal; it’s on a low floor). Nespresso coffee makers in guest rooms. The eco-frfiendly hotel has LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification. Roof bar. Barber shop.

Cool detail: The clock in the fitness center spells out the time and is one of the cleverest wall clocks we’ve ever seen.

Surroundings: Situated not far from the southern tip of Manhattan, the Conrad is a block away from the Hudson River and about as far west as you can go. But it’s also steps away from One World Trade Center, the Ground Zero monuments and  the behemoth World Financial Center office building with a large, high-end shopping area (Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Oliver Peoples, Lululemon) and restaurants. Adjoining the hotel is a street of smart shops and restaurants, including Blooms, the stylish florist that supplies Conrad’s statuesque lobby arrangements and sells camera-ready bouquets.

Best of all, Regal Cinemas, an 11-screen multiplex connects to the hotel if you prefer a bigger screen than your guestroom flatpanel. The location is also great if you need to be in the Financial District, Tribeca or the West Village or want to visit Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty or Brooklyn. But Chambers Street, the nearest subway station is a hike, and buses are scarce. Getting to midtown is a schlep; expect to take taxis or Ubers.

Back story: The hotel was built from the ground up in 2000 as an Embassy Suites. It felt very mainstream American – rooms had windows facing the atrium, just like Embassy Suites elsewhere, and the adjoining businesses included Applebees and an 11-screen multiplex movie theater. It also had a first-rate contemporary art collection, including a large painting by Pat Steir and Sol Lewitt’s towering Loopy Doopy, the lobby showpiece.

In 2011, the hotel was purchased by the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, which has its headquarters across the street, and closed for renovations. It reopened in March 2012 as the first New York outpost of a more upscale Hilton International chain – the Conrad. The adjoining restaurants and shops have been bumped up a notch to include local business and restaurants overseen by master restaurateur Danny Meyer. Fortunately, the artwork remains, joined by a fleet of new contemporary pieces. And Regal Cinema 11 still anchors the block.

Keep in mind: You’ll probably wind up taking lots of Ubers or taxis.