The 29 best New York hotels for 2023
For a city that claims to never sleep, there are hundreds – over 500 according to Booking.com – of places to rest your head for the night. Some are much more than just places to sleep; a special few are even integral to the city’s identity, with historic addresses such as the Plaza and the Waldorf Astoria playing starring roles in New York’s cityscape, plus some of the most beloved TV shows and films. The grand dames may last the test of time, but much of New York’s hotel scene is in a state of constant flux. New addresses pop up regularly and old ones are revamped to keep up with the changing trends. The scope of the best hotels in New York grows wider too, branching out well beyond the usual Time Square addresses, venturing downtown and even over the bridges.
It’s a tricky scene to keep up with, but our editors are up to the challenge. Here we share our pick of the best New York hotels – as chosen by our team of editors who have stayed at ever single hotel featured on this list.
What’s the best part of New York to stay in?
Locals will tell you to skip staying near Time Square, the soulless midtown monstrosity is a classic tourist trap with much hype but little to offer. If it’s your first time in New York or a whistle-stop trip, a hotel in midtown could be your best option for ease of getting around. But if you’re looking for a glimpse of real New York and its many personalities, some of the best hotels in New York are found outside of Midtown, like The Carlyle on the Upper East Side or PUBLIC hotel on the Lower East. Some of the city’s hottest addresses have even started to pop up outside of Manhattan, with Ace Hotel and 1 Hotel now with locations in Brooklyn and even Boro Hotel in Long Island City.
What are the best affordable hotels in New York?
New York hotels can be notoriously expensive, but there are some addresses that offer great value. One of our favourite spots is the Ace Hotel in NoMad, where rooms can start from £155 per night. For more, see our pick of the cheapest nicest hotels in New York.
Robert Rieger1. Aman New York, Midtown
The latest address to open in the city is also Aman’s first urban outpost in the US. Offering a much-needed exhale in the middle of Midtown Manhattan, the hotel combines quietly luxurious design with a generous commitment to space and a sense of rarefied seclusion. Case in point, the sprawling, three-floor spa and wellness centre with its 65-foot pool, and not one but two spa houses – one centred around an Eastern European banya, the other a Moroccan hammam. Set within the iconic Crown Building on Fifth Avenue, there are only 83 suites in total, all generous in space by New York standards, with working fireplaces and well sound-proofed windows. Rarer still is the outdoor space – there’s the Garden Terrace Bar as well as outdoor seating at Arva, Aman’s signature Italian restaurant. Read more of our Aman New York review.
Address: The Crown Building, 730 5th Ave, New York, NY 10019, United States
2. The Ned, NoMad
Five years after the landmark Ned opened in London, it has come to roost in NoMad, in the building occupied for nearly a decade by the neighbourhood’s namesake hotel. While The Ned NoMad isn’t quite as opulent as its sibling across the pond, it has the same dual role as a members’ club and stylish city bolthole (the brand is part of the Membership Collective Group, which also owns the Soho House venues). This is a glamorous modern take on Art Deco in a Beaux Arts building, with rich upholstery, marble floors and warm woods. Traces of the old hotel remain in the design details at the bar and restaurant Little Ned, which serves American classics to diners in 1920s-style booth seating. The property’s 167 rooms retain their wood panelling, damask dividers and, happily, freestanding claw-foot bathtubs. The rooftop restaurant and bar are currently available only to Ned’s Club members, but the company is betting that guests will join up. In fact, it’s counting on it: a second New York Ned is set to open in the Financial District in 2024 – and at a scale to rival the London location. Arati Menon
Address: The Ned NoMad, 1170 Broadway, New York, NY 10001, United States
Joe Thomas3. The Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad
When Ritz-Carlton announced its ambition to open in the NoMad neighbourhood, it raised some questions. Would it deliver its trademark brand of traditional luxury or incorporate some of the energy of the hotels that have transformed this once-anonymous neighbourhood into a place with a pulse? But this looks like the brand going a little off its beaten path: there’s a José Andrés restaurant serving moreish branzino, a lobby with hand-blown Randy Zieber light fixtures and an arboretum’s worth of potted plants around the place. Through the hotel’s outdoor plaza, passersby spy entrepreneurial types, heads bowed over Old Fashioneds on the green bar stools beneath a canopy of foliage. Upstairs, the rooms have cloud-like beds and wide windows with expansive views. The subterranean spa, with its black Italian-marble treatment rooms, has a reputation for its facials. The old indulgences, straight out of the Ritz’s classic playbook, blend seamlessly with the NoMad vibe. Scott Bay
Address: The Ritz-Carlton, 25 W 28th St, New York, NY 10001, United States
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Courtesy The Mark/Francesco Tonelli4. The Mark, Upper East Side
Featured on our 2022 Gold List of the best hotels in the world
I’m not a fan of the term staycation, but I certainly enjoy the concept. And a delight of living in New York is that hotels here easily double as portholes of escape from my day-to-day existence in Brooklyn. Checking into The Mark, elegantly occupying a block between Fifth and Madison avenues close to Central Park, is like unlocking the door to my secret pied-à-terre on the Upper East Side. Here, tidy bundles of clipped white roses spruce up my dressing table, and the bathtub is a reliable 10 centimetres deeper than any I’d likely have at home. Those familiar with the work of French interiors master Jacques Grange will recognise his trademark restraint here. What The Mark lacks in ostentation it makes up for in subtle, glowing sophistication, from the tiled floor in the very discreet lobby to the sparse hallways that dimly light the way to each pale-blue door, with just the right splashes of commissioned art displayed throughout. Then there are those classic New York touch points, but fancied up a notch: the hot-dog stand with a menu designed by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and picnic baskets for Central Park delivered via pedicab and set up under oak trees with loungers and blankets. The Mark’s calling card is how successfully it transports guests into an elegant version of that very distinct style of life in New York, one that people travel from all over the world to get a taste of. And, for a lucky few, it’s just a subway ride away. Erin Florio
Address: The Mark 25 E 77th St, New York, NY 10075, United States
Joe Thomas5. Hotel Chelsea
The former stomping ground of Andy Warhol, Dylan Thomas, Sid Vicious and the rest, the Chelsea has a fair claim to being New York City’s most rock ’n’ roll hotel. It stopped taking reservations in 2011 but finally reopened last year, with long-overdue upgrades to its 1884 bones, and the famous old spirit just about intact. The 155 guest rooms and suites are now bright and airy, with animal-print chairs bringing zing to original fireplaces, stained- glass windows and the wrought-iron balconies where Patti Smith and so many others peered out over West 23rd Street. Artworks by Sandro Chia and Alain Jacquet hang in the stairwells, a cleaned-up echo of a messy bohemian past. The tightly packed tables and banquettes of the 92-year-old El Quijote restaurant are busy again, still with raffish-red decor and homely Galician and Basque food. The decadent Lobby Bar has added a solarium to go with the chandeliers and grand piano, and a cocktail menu loaded with hotel classics. Some permanent residents still live in Hotel Chelsea’s few remaining apartments – like the old place itself, they probably have a story or two. Megan Spurrell
Address: The Hotel Chelsea, 222 West Twenty-Third Street, New York, N. Y. 10011
6. Ace Hotel Brooklyn, Brooklyn
Featured on our 2022 Hot List of the best new hotels in the world
The lobby in any Ace hotel is the place to be, and its Brooklyn outpost is no different. There are public workspaces galore—including a library-style table, a plant-filled garden, and a moody bar area with cozy seating—and plenty of guests, locals, and staff making use of them all. Many of the hallmarks of Ace decor are present in the 287 rooms: plywood furniture that offers both form and function, local art, and pops of colour (in this case, a deep green). But the room design also leans into the industrial building’s architecture, with exposed concrete and warehouse windows. Meredith Carey
Address: Ace Hotel Brooklyn, 252 Schermerhorn St, Brooklyn, NY 11217, United States
Adrian Gaut7. Freehand New York, Flat Iron
The New York debut of this trendsetting hotel/hostel hybrid is a boon for the upscale but sometimes sleepy area around Gramercy Park. Located in the old George Washington hotel, the property pays tribute to the historic architecture with details like mahogany panelling and a portrait of the country’s first president in the George Washington Bar. But, designed by hit-making firm Roman and Williams, interiors have been updated with forest-green tiles, mid-century furniture, exotic textiles, and plenty of plants. Bedrooms include shared bunk rooms (perfect for families or groups of friends) to an enormous penthouse suite with views to match. Restaurateur Gabriel Stulman (of New York joints Bar Sardine, and Fedora) is behind the bar, Studio, an all-day café serving Middle Eastern snacks of spring-pea hoummous and lamb kebabs with tahini yoghurt, as well as the more upscale Simon & the Whale, which dishes up killer pastas and salads like the mouthwatering chicory tonnato. Soon to come: a rooftop outpost of the award-winning Broken Shaker bar, which originated at the group's Miami outpost.
Address: Freehand New York, 23 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10010, United States
Bruce Buck8. The St Regis New York, Midtown
Even the most unaffected New Yorkers can’t help but feel a tinge of nostalgia when passing through the gilded revolving doors of the St Regis to be promptly greeted by a gentleman with white gloves and a smile. The sense of the city’s golden era lingers in that lobby, where shining chandeliers warm the pale walls to create a necessary calming counter to the crush of cabs and suits in Midtown Manhattan. It’s precisely the atmosphere John Jacob Astor IV sought to capture when he opened this 18-storey, Beaux-Arts landmark at the turn of last century. Today, there’s more Michael Kors than mink in the King Cole Bar, though the order hasn’t changed: ignore the lengthy cocktail list and go for a note-perfect dry Martini or a Bloody Mary, the house speciality, and fall into conversation with the bankers in from Boston sitting at the bar. For those who do stay on for a Martini or three more, it’s nice to know that your suite is just an elevator ride away. It may be done up in lipstick-ruby wallpaper or blue velvet curtains and striped white walls, with classic pieces such as silk-stitched loveseats and oil paintings to resemble that glamorous pied à terre everyone fantasises about. A New York institution that channels the city’s glamorous past like no other, steps from the Fifth Avenue buzz. Erin Florio
Address: The St Regis New York, Two E 55th Street, New York, NY 10022, United States
9. The Beekman, a Thompson Hotel, Lower Manhattan
When a hotel opens in New York it’s not uncommon for locals to barely notice. This is, after all, a city crawling with them – big, small, modern, classic. In this town, it really takes an exceptional property, in an exceptional neighbourhood, to capture the collective consciousness. Which is exactly what happened in 2016, when The Beekman opened. First off, consider its location in the Financial District. Pre-9/11, this area catered to bankers and stockbrokers who scurried back uptown or to Westchester as soon as the market’s closing bell chimed. It was a no man’s land. Post 9/11, bars and restaurants opened and flourished; shops came; smart apartment buildings popped up. And then came the Beekman. The landmark building was built in the 1880s with a nine-storey, glass-ceiling atrium, but throughout the past century, the atrium had been covered up as the building functioned as just another office. And thank goodness, because when the property was being developed the covers were torn down, revealing the glasswork and wrought-iron railings beautifully intact. Now the glass skylight soars once again above the lobby’s Art Deco bar where New Yorkers flock to – come 6pm it’s nearly impossible to find a free bar stool. The rooms all have vintage furnishings, with dark wood floors and distressed leather headboards – they’re just what you’d want your New York apartment to feel like: comfortable but not so much so that you don’t want to leave and miss out on everything happening around you. The hotel is also home to Tom Colicchio’s classic American restaurant spot Temple Court, worthy of a dinner reservation. So many hotels like to say they’ve made the neighbourhood, but in the case of the Beekman it’s actually true. Lauren DeCarlo
Address: The Beekman, a Thompson Hotel, Beekman Street, New York, NY 10038, United States
10. The Hoxton Williamsburg, Brooklyn
The Hoxton's first outpost in the US, there are pastel, velvet armchairs, retro details (from the Roberts Radios to the light fittings in the hangout-lobby) and views of the Manhattan or Brooklyn skylines from each of the 175 bedrooms. A recent collaboration with BOKA restaurant group has also meant a fresh food and beverage scene within the hotel; Laser Wolf is on the rooftop and serves fragrant skewers and classic cocktails, while K'Far is a fine dining hideout for innovative Israeli food, inspired by head chef Michael Solomonov’s hometown.
Address: The Hoxton Williamsburg, 97 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11249, United States
11. Hotel 50 Bowery, Chinatown
This glossy high-rise is Chinatown’s first major boutique hotel and it pays homage to its location with a gallery of artefacts labelled with informative placards curated by the Museum of Chinese in America. At the street art-filled restaurant Rice & Gold, Filipino chef Dale Talde cooks up dim sum and noodles with influences from China, India and Malaysia. Rooftop bar The Crown offers a unique perspective on Lower Manhattan with views that stretch to Midtown. An underground nightclub is on its way.
Address: Hotel 50 Bowery, 50 Bowery, New York, NY 10013, United States
12. 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, Dumbo, Brooklyn
This eco-chic hotel in Dumbo is a tree-hugger’s fantasy. There's reclaimed wood everywhere, a living plant wall adorns the lobby, and rough-hewn marble sinks create an earthy vibe. But it’s not just looks – the hotel has organic sheets, filtered taps and recycled glass bottles in all the rooms to improve sustainability. Corner suites come with hammocks – perfect for staring out at those sweeping views of the Brooklyn Bridge. The restaurant, The Osprey, serves a mean brunch of bread pudding French toast with lemon curd and whipped ricotta or a stellar veggie burger made with nut cheese for the more health-concious. Come summer, the rooftop bar is the place to be, with staggering views of Manhattan.
Address: 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, 60 Furman Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201, United States
13. Pendry Manhattan West, Midtown
Featured on our 2022 Hot List of the best new hotels in the world
Pendry Manhattan West aims to bring a West Coast vibe to Midtown Manhattan, with 30 sprawling suites (all with floor-to-ceiling windows) and 164 guest rooms, modern furnishings, abundant greenery, and warm recessed lighting in both the rooms and common areas. The resulting crowd is mostly cool creatives looking for a place to hole up, whom you’ll spot posted up on laptops in the lounges during the day, and beelining to the ground-floor Bar Pendry for an innovative cocktail with friends in the evenings. Arrive with plenty of busy days planned out in the Manhattan West development, knowing you’ll have a calm space to recharge at night—complete with soft slippers and bedside macarons via turndown. Shannon McMahon
14. The Greenwich, Tribeca
In an era of the ever-more hyper-exclusive members’ club luring the black-card-carrying wolf pack, Robert DeNiro’s hotel makes privacy feel refreshingly effortless. Built more than a decade ago in this cobblestoned lower Manhattan quarter, it creates the sensation of stepping into the actor’s own salon. The lobby is hung with abstract paintings by DeNiro’s late father. Beyond it, more inner sanctums: a book-filled drawing room emerges into a pocket garden, where topiaries cast an Italianate charm. Each of the rooms is idiosyncratically arranged with antique silk rugs, the odd vintage table and marble bathtubs, while the Tribeca penthouse is earthy and minimalist. But the enduring revelation is the Shibui spa, where the lantern-lit pool glimmers under the beams of a 250-year-old Japanese farmhouse. A festive din still kicks up every night at Locanda Verde, which serves rustic plates of duck orecchiette, and New York fixtures such as Yoko Ono and Jay-Z go pretty much incognito, but things settle down early. The wolf pack can go elsewhere.
Address: The Greenwich, 377 Greenwich Street, New York, NY 10013, United States
15. Lowell Hotel, Upper East Side
This privately-owned property on ritzy East 63rd Street, with Hermès for a neighbour and Barneys diagonally across the way, has always been exceptionally chic. But even the loveliest hotels have to age, and what the Lowell needed, as even its most diehard devotees had started to whisper, was a facelift. Well, she got it. After a three year renovation, the once-sombre black entrance lobby was gone by its 2017 opening, replaced by a gorgeous neoclassical foyer, bright and welcoming, sympathetic of scale. Behind it, there’s the Club Room, the most cosseting drawing room of any hotel in New York. And even the dear old Pembroke Room, which magics up the best afternoon tea in the city, has had a makeover; it’s still pretty as a peach but somehow fresher and airier. Majorelle is a beautiful, Moroccan-inspired French restaurant run by Charles Masson, previously of La Grenouille. There are vast arrangements of lilies and hydrangeas, sweet-smelling, blousy pink roses on the tables, a working fireplace for the winter and a retractable roof for summer. And all this before you’ve even tasted the magnificent couscous, perhaps, or the tangy tagine of snapper with preserved lemons. The bedrooms are the last word in elegance, with polished mahogany floors, Persian rugs and good, hand-made furniture (plus great technology, of course). Once again, everything at The Lowell is exactly as it should be.
Address: Lowell Hotel, 28 E 63rd Street, New York, NY 10065, United States
16. MADE Hotel, NoMad
This boutique hotel might be in the middle of trendy NoMad, but it feels like a serene Japanese hideaway. Enter the lobby, and you'll find yourself in an intimate space with a cosy coffee shop and communal tables. Reclaimed wood dominates the design in both the rooms and public spaces, while hand-woven textiles and brass fixtures add texture. The lobby bar serves some of the most creative and tastiest cocktails around, with the food and beverage operations overseen by Steven Waters. The in-house restaurant, Debajo, is now the neighbourhood go-to for classic tapas – think patatas bravas, slithers of aged Serrano ham and cod croquettes served with lemon aioli for generous dipping. The rooftop bar is one of the trendiest events spaces around, where you can catch New Yorkers and travellers alike sipping away the spring and summer evenings.
Address: MADE Hotel, 44 W 29th Street, New York, NY 10001, United States
Durston Saylor17. The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel, Upper East Side
'If we want things to stay as they are,' Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa famously wrote, 'things will have to change.' Anyone who knows and loves The Carlyle will want things at this Upper East Side institution to stay as they are, while also understanding that a certain amount of tweaking is, alas, necessary. Renovations here have always been a fraught business, not least because, as well as being a hotel, it also contains 50 or so privately owned apartments spread across its 35 floors, making it impossible to do the whole place up all at once. Thus some rooms are florid and chintzy; some are 1920s time capsules; some are slick and steely; and still others are something in between. Broadly speaking, they get better the higher the floor. Plus, you get to spend more time in the elevators – not an activity to enjoy in everyday life, but this is not everyday life. The ones at The Carlyle are the stuff of legend, as much admired as the astounding Dorothy Draper lobby or Bemelmans Bar. Steve King
Address: The Carlyle, 35 E 76th Street, New York, NY 10021, United States
The Wall Street Hotel18. The Wall Street Hotel, Financial District
These days, there’s pleasure as well as business to be had in the Financial District – and The Wall Street Hotel points to a more layered identity than the stereotypes of Goldman-issue puffer vests, charging bulls and Ellis Island ferries. Its owners, the Paspaley pearling family, hired multi-hyphenate designer Liubasha Rose (The Well Manhattan, The Madeline Telluride) to turn their former company HQ – an exquisite Beaux Arts corner building – into a refined Art Deco-accented 180-room hotel, heavy on brass, velvet and apt mother-of-pearl. As well as gems and oysters, Rose was inspired by timeless New York hotel spaces like The Carlyle’s Bemelmans Bar. Hence, a playfully art-directed elegance prevails, from rooms with brass-and-mirror bar carts and oyster-inspired watercolours to the clashing colours and textures of the double-height Lounge on Pearl bar. John Fraser, a prolific chef-restaurateur known for his Michelin- starred vegetarian restaurant, Nix, oversees La Marchande brasserie, with Long Island oysters and vanilla-cured snapper at the raw bar, and not a hedge funder in sight. A rooftop bar with precious river views is in the pipeline. Megan Spurrell
Address: The Wall Street Hotel, 88 Wall St, New York, NY 10005, United States
Joe Thomas19. Hotel Barrière Fouquet's New York, Tribeca
French hospitality company Group Barrière set Paris on fire with Hôtel Barrière Le Fouquet’s Paris, Jacques Garcia’s fantastical landmark in the city’s Golden Triangle, followed up a few years ago by the chic Hôtel Barrière Le Carl Gustaf on St Barts. Now the group has transformed a cobblestoned corner of Tribeca with its US debut. Inside, the wallpaper depicts expressionist park scenes and Francophile illustrations of New York City, such as Lady Liberty and cartoon pigeons carrying croissants in their beaks. The street-level outpost of its famed Champs-Élysées bistro, Fouquet’s, has become a destination in itself, offering brasserie-issue escargots and onion soup by Michelin-starred chef Pierre Gagnaire at its signature red-and- black bar. The buzz and cooking are lighter at Par Ici Café, which has a lush greenhouse look and a vegetarian focus, while things get sultrier at the guests-only Titsou cocktail bar. In the 97 rooms, interior designer Martin Brudnizki has tweaked his trademark refined maximalism, using a palette of French lavender and mint green, antiqued gold-leaf mirrors, and deep velvet couches. For the ultimate upgrade, the two-storey Le Grand Appartement Terrasse includes multiple terraces, some overlooking the Hudson. Shannon McMahon
Address: Hotel Barrière Fouquet's New York,456 Greenwich St, New York, NY 10013, United States
20. Hotel Hugo, Greenwich Village
This stylish, 20-storey hotel with its Art Deco interiors is a good excuse to explore this bit of Manhattan. With 17ft walls of travertine marble in the lobby, walnut panelling and low-slung leather seating, Beverly Hills-based designer Marcello Pozzi has given the 122-room property a distinctive look reminiscent of 1940s Rome. The rooms, while mostly modest in size, are well laid out with space to manoeuvre around the bed and swish marbled and grey-and-white tiled bathrooms, some with both bathtubs and showers. Those on the upper floors have views across the Hudson to Hoboken, but the additional cost may be better spent in the shops of SoHo. The two rooftop bars - Bar Hugo and Cuban-themed Azul - have staggering 360-degree views. In summer, Azul has the edge because it's open air, and serves delicious Mojitos.
Address: Hotel Hugo, 525 Greenwich Street, New York, NY 10013, United States
21. PUBLIC Hotel, Lower East Side
Known for its iconic neon escalators, the much-buzzed-about new hotel from the legendary Ian Schrager (of Studio 54 fame) has landed on the Lower East Side. With the aim of bringing the brand to a wider audience and keeping rates down, the hotel offers streamlined express check-in via a mobile app (there are kiosks in the lobby to help) and minimalist micro-rooms that are certainly small but do have huge windows and great views. There's no room service either, but guests can electronically order food from the restaurant and pick it up from the lobby. However, what the hotel lacks in size and service it makes up for with the gorgeous restaurant garden, Popular and Cantina, which has a menu by Peruvian chef Diego Munoz. There's also a sceney rooftop nightclub with a fantastic vantage point over Lower Manhattan and a harder-to-find cocktail den Bar Chrystie. The design is flawless and the people-watching is just as good.
Address: PUBLIC Hotel, 215 Chrystie Street, New York, NY 10002, United States
22. The New York Edition, Madison Square Park
It's hard to believe, but when the Metropolitan Life Clock Tower was completed in 1910, the 41-floor (700ft) structure, designed to resemble the campanile in Venice, was the tallest building in the world – only to lose that crown to the Woolworth Building in Lower Manhattan three years later. In the decades since, it has stood sentinel over the increasingly trendy Madison Square Park district. So trendy, in fact, that it made perfect sense when Ian Schrager's Edition brand landed the deal to convert it into a hip 273-room hotel. The result is polished, chic and tasteful throughout. Many rooms on the upper floors have views of the beaming Empire State Building to the north, or One Madison Tower (home to Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen and Rupert Murdoch) to the south. All have pleasing blond-wood floors, striking ebonised headboards and door casements, snow-white sofas and wheat-coloured resin bathrooms.
The Clock Tower restaurant on the second floor is busy, clubby and panelled, with architectural details dating back to when it served as Metropolitan Life's executive offices in the 1920s and 1930s. The menu, by London's Jason Atherton (of Pollen Street Social), is nothing short of phenomenal, with exquisite interpretations of American classics such as mac and cheese with wild mushrooms and slow-cooked ox-cheek, and North African-spiced Colorado lamb with yogurt, young curried onions and smoked eggplant, all assembled with a light sprinkling of British ingredients (English cucumbers!). A table here is one of the most sought-after in town.
Address: The New York EDITION, Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10010, United States
Alamy23. The Plaza, A Fairmont Managed Hotel, Midtown
With its position facing Central Park on one side and the world-famous FAO Schwartz toyshop across Fifth Avenue, plus its association with Eloise, the precocious children's book character who lived at the hotel (her portrait hangs opposite the Palm Court), the Plaza is just made for kids. The hotel is styled as a French château: crystal chandeliers, velvet sofas, acres of polished floors. Stay in the Tower Suite, an extraordinary corner room with circular beds and ridiculously high, turreted ceilings. A family 'ambassador' (that is, a particularly patient and smiley staff member) accompanies you to your room on check-in, and knights younger family members with a ceremonial sword. 'For young children who have demonstrated bravery and prowess on the battlefield,' reads the ambassador, totally straight-faced, from a scroll that might put Magna Carta to shame and is yours to take home. (And if New York is a combat zone in terms of shopping and sightseeing, the citation couldn't be more apt.) Yes, it's kind of hokey, and older children might roll their eyes, but the under-eights can't get enough of this shtick - or the host of goodies, including a closet full of dressing-up gear, children's terrycloth bathrobes (very knightly), a hardback copy of The Knight at Dawn from the Magic Tree House series, and a $100 gift card for FAO Schwartz. They even throw in a family picnic, to be taken at Belvedere Castle in the park.
Address: The Plaza, 768 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10019, United States
Joe Thomas24. Nine Orchard, Downtown
Gritty-cool Dimes Square, the micro-neighbourhood at the bottom of the Lower East Side, is a place where 20-somethings carouse, 30-somethings debate leaving, and 40-somethings recall their misspent youth. But it’s mostly the 40-somethings who have been catered for at this boutique hotel in the former Jarmulowsky bank, just a few blocks from the Manhattan Bridge. Since June 2022 its beautiful bar, flooded with light from oversized windows, has been filled with a smart crowd that’s a world away from the ragtag skaters outside. They’ve come to admire the painstakingly restored vaulted ceilings, and superstar Uruguayan chef Ignacio Mattos’s accessible cooking in the cosy Corner Bar, where the steak au poivre and lamb ragù are served bistro-style. Each of the 116 minimal rooms has well-stocked bar carts – ideal for late-night baths, drinking single malts to the tunes of Nine Orchard’s four radio stations, curated by local DJs Stretch Armstrong and Devon Turnbull. Lara Kramer
Address: Nine Orchard, 9 Orchard St, New York, NY 10002, United States
Amanda Villarosa25. Conrad New York Midtown
One of a handful of hotels that opened just before the pandemic, the Conrad Midtown never really got going pre-March 2020. As New York started to open up again in summer 2021, so did the hotel – with 500 suites in a prime spot of Manhattan real estate. The location is as convenient as they come – you’re four blocks from Central Park and just around the corner from the MoMA, Fifth Avenue, Broadway and Radio City Music Hall (although we’d jump on one of the many subway lines to find lunch, supper and drinks in one of the city’s less touristy neighbourhoods). Suites have either views of the city, with skyscrapers jutting up around the hotel’s 50-odd floors, or the park. Skip eye-wateringly expensive room service breakfast in favour of a stroll uptown through the Upper West Side (we like Barney Greengrass for smoked salmon bagels the size of your head) to then eat whatever you pick up on a bench in the park, or stroll through Times Square before the neon-lit nexus properly wakes up and grab coffee at Culture Espresso. Sarah James
Address: Conrad New York Midtown, 151 W 54th Street, New York, NY 10019, United States
26. The Whitby Hotel, Midtown
The second New York property by Tim and Kit Kemp, The Whitby brings colourful contemporary style to Midtown. Eclectic touches are everywhere: there's an installation of baskets that hangs above the pewter bar, custom scalloped headboards in the individually designed bedrooms and porcelain sculptures etched with New York landmarks in the Orangery. With its bright style and top-notch service, the hotel brings a breath of fresh air into a part of the city dominated by stuffy grand dames.
Address: The Whitby, 18 W 56th Street, New York, NY 10019, United States
27. The Williamsburg Hotel, Brooklyn
One of three hotels on a three-block stretch of Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg, this spot sets itself apart with style in spades. The great new restaurant just off the sunken lobby bar serves wood-fired pizzas and features an impressive bread and pastry programme in collaboration with the pop-up kitchen Brooklyn Bread Lab. The design, meanwhile, features exposed brick with pops of colour, like the rainbow yarn installation above the bar. Some rooms are on the small side, but they all have huge windows. (Request a room on the building’s east side for the best skyline views.) And stay tuned for the opening of the water tower cocktail lounge on the roof.
Address: The Williamsburg Hotel, 96 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11249, United States
28. Boro Hotel, Long Island City
If you think Long Island City sounds like it's a long way from anything, you would be both right and a little wrong. This industrial-chic hotel in the magnificently named Dutch Kills neighbourhood of Queens is just two subway stops from 57th Street Manhattan. It's also just a few stops from Williamsburg. The designers have done a great job in turning what is nonetheless a challenging location into a plus by ensuring that most of the 108 loft-like rooms have views of Manhattan, and adding big (not Juliet) balconies and terraces. Once past the post-apocalyptic industrial exterior (it's covered in metal slats), the overall look is a much warmer, gritty Berlin meets cool Mexico City. The cinderblock and graffiti style was designed (but not overtly so) by Grzywinski + Pons, and it's slick and welcoming, with a book-lined lobby, and oak floors and cork ceilings everywhere. The bedrooms are roomy, with 10ft ceilings, surprisingly big bathrooms, and pine floors, celadon-coloured wainscoting, and stylishly simple wood beds, desks and chairs. The restaurant, with indoor and outdoor seating, serves no-nonsense American and French bistro favourites, and showcase beers from local microbreweries.
Address: Boro Hotel, 38-28 27th Street, Queens, NY 11101, United States
29. 1 Hotel Central Park, Midtown
This handsome 229-room hotel, designed by the fashionable AvroKO group and Kemper Hyers, is green all over, with eco-tastic touches such as stylish reclaimed-wood furniture, an egg timer in the showers to tell you when five minutes is up, chalkboards on the nightstand in place of notepads, recycled cardboard hangers in the wardrobe, organic Keetsa mattresses, triple-filtered water coming out of all the taps, and American Ivy planted inside and out.
The 100-seat restaurant, Jams, marks the revival of local farm-to-table superstar chef, Jonathan Waxman, whose beloved original restaurant of the same name opened in the 1980s. His menu here has some of his all-time favourites – grilled chicken with tarragon butter; red-pepper latkes with smoked salmon, corn and California caviar – as well as new additions such as rigatoni with crab meat and swordfish with grilled pineapple salsa. All are made using locally grown or sustainably raised organic ingredients. And to work off those meals, there's a light-filled fitness centre – the floorboards are upcycled from a Wisconsin gymnasium – with enormous windows (a rarity in Manhattan). Or you could always hop on one of the hotel's bicycles and ride up to Manhattan's largest eco-Arcadia, glorious Central Park, just two blocks north.
Address: 1 Hotel Central Park, 1414 6th Avenue, New York, NY 10019, United States
30. Baccarat Hotel, Midtown
How many massive, Phantom-of-the-Opera-style Baccarat crystal chandeliers does it take to create an over-the-top hotel fit for a princess? The answer, according to this glittery new addition to the New York skyline, appears to be 17. And the crystal encrustedness certainly does not stop there. It first makes an impact as one approaches the shimmery exterior wall of this Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed building, continues with the spellbinding LED-light-patterned wall of 1,800 Baccarat Harcourt wineglasses in the lower lobby, through the grand salons and the 60ft, barrel-ceilinged bar filled with crystal sconces, crystal art, and finally up to the 112 relatively restrained bedrooms with their crystal table lamps and vases. With pleasing touches such as Fauchon almond biscuits, chocolates and cheddar mini-crêpes in the red-lacquered not-so-mini-bars and custom-made Mascioni jacquard bedding, the rooms are cosseting and calming spaces. Executive chef Ali Dey Daly leads the gastronomic front, bringing his experience from Michelin-starred Cru to the hotel to present elevated and imaginative dishes that attract foodie New Yorkers and international guests alike. With its shades of platinum and champagne, Grand Salon is the hotel's flagship food and beverage option, where craft cocktails in cut-crystal tumblers wash down plates of red snapper and bowls of seasonal pasta and risotto.