New York City
Since entrepreneur Ian Schrager opened the minimal-modern boutique hotel Morgans, in New York, in 1984, his slightly eccentric caravanseries have proved successful with a cosmopolitan crowd who spurn the conventional accommodations of U.S. hotel chains. So it was quite surprising when in 2007 Schrager began a partnership with the chain of chains Marriott International to create a global cluster of “modern luxury” Edition hotels. The first opened in Waikiki, Hawaii, in 2010, and then came more Editions in Istanbul, London, and Miami Beach before arriving this spring in New York. Aiming for an “understated timeless aesthetic,” Ian Schrager Company enlisted the Rockwell Group to help with the interior design of the first Edition in Manhattan.
The gimlet-eyed among us might remark that Marriott is to “luxury” what David Rockwell is to “understated”: the Rockwell Group is known for colorful, jazzy environments such as New York’s Tao Downtown restaurant, not to mention the steam-punkish stage set for the Broadway musical Kinky Boots and the bodacious backdrop for Hair Spray. Rockwell affably responds that he has designed a number of muted interiors. Hmm. Yes, there is the natural-wood-and-white Yotel near Times Square. For his part, Schrager says he likes the architect not only because of his professionalism, but “because he can voice an opinion on the right color.” Even if the colors veer wildly from crème to caramel.
For this particular venture into the high end, Marriott took over one of the lesser-known architectural treasures of New York, the old Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower (now known as the Clocktower) on the east side of Madison Square Park, at Madison Avenue and 24th Street. The 700-foot-high skyscraper, completed in 1909 by Napolean Le Brun & Sons, was the tallest in the city until the 792-foot-high Woolworth Building came along in 1913. It was the grandest addition to the Metropolitan Life complex, which the architects had begun in 1893, filling out a city block for the insurance company. The steel-framed campanile evokes the famous bell tower for St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, but bearing large clocks on its four sides. Meanwhile, the neighborhood, once dominated by office buildings, banks, and a state court house, is now pulsing with restaurants, new apartment houses, and upgraded hotels for the young-money set.
In order for Schrager and Rockwell to successfully turn the 41-story structure into a hotel, they had to insert the requisite public spaces—lobby, reception, restaurant, and bar, plus health club and spa—into the small base, 75 by 85 feet, with a thick elevator core. As Schrager puts it, “It was like dealing with a Rubik’s Cube but at a greater scale.”
On top of that, it seemed a better fit for the the main entrance to be placed on 24th Street rather than Madison Avenue, even though access at grade is flanked by existing elevated lobby areas. As you enter, you ascend several steps to the reception desk on the east or the lounge on the west, or walk straight ahead (no steps) to the elevator bank. The look of the lobby, lounge, and reception is 1930s–40s art moderne, with the tall silk draperies and smoothly shaped tables and lamps designed by the Parisian designer Christian Liaigre, and with chairs by Alvar Aalto and other pieces inspired by Jean Michel Frank. The serene color scheme varies from silver, bronze, taupe, and charcoal, to vivid gold (for the backlit vitrine behind the bar). The streamlined style is given a Corbusian twist with a spiraling ivory-hued steel-plate stair in one end of the rear lobby. Here you also find a 30-foot-long recessed blackened-steel fireplace wall edging the sitting area.
Since the ground floor had been extensively remodeled in the 1960s, there was little to restore. The Rockwell Group tried to keep a sense of the shell by installing sand-colored cast-concrete floor tile and window moldings within the 14-foot-high spaces where ceilings are articulated by off-white beams of glass-fiber-reinforced concrete. These, along with cream-colored Venetian plaster walls infuse the setting with an assured sense of swank.
The Clocktower restaurant and its three dining rooms, a bar, and a billiard room, with outside access on Madison Avenue, occupy the second floor in the former executive offices. Here landmarked rooms, replete with restored mahogany wainscoting, oak floors, and deeply molded plaster ceilings provide dark, clubby spaces for the soigné clientele.
The guest rooms, 273 in all, with a color scheme based on shades of white, have new oak-paneled foyers and floors and dark walnut headboards. They impart a sense of the old (including existing shallow barrel-vaulted ceilings now painted and plastered), and the new that Schrager and Rockwell meant to—and did—achieve. The ambience that results, to quote Baudelaire in describing a place a traveler hopes to find, appears to be one of luxe, calme, and volupté.
