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A Luxury Hotel for a New Generation: The New York Edition

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Hospitality impresario Ian Schrager pretty much created the boutique lifestyle hotel, 1980s-style. Prominent New York hubs like Morgans, the Royalton and the Paramount mixed minimalist high design with low lighting and a nightclub feel, and gave rise to brands from W to Kimpton. Once the style went mainstream, Schrager did a 180 and reopened the Gramercy Park Hotel as a maximalist pleasure palace, designed in high Renaissance-revival style, all Baroque Louis XV chairs and plush scarlet velvet couches.

Now Schrager has swung back to a happy place in the middle, just where the pendulum feels like it should be in 2015. His new Edition Hotels brand, in collaboration with Marriott, speaks to the next generation of travelers—who value the luxury of simplicity and the right combination of glamour and restraint.

The New York Edition, which opened in May, is more subdued than Schrager’s previous genre-defining hotel  but more exciting than the “make no offense” approach long favored by Marriott and other big luxury brands. (I recently stayed as a guest of the hotel.)

There’s no attitude in the lobby, which is just off newly cool Madison Square Park in the 1909 Metropolitan Life “Clocktower” building. The crowd and décor are sleek and sophisticated, but new arrivals are made to feel like they belong. And they’ll be encouraged to head back downstairs to work or socialize in the lobby—Schrager is also credited with popularizing “lobby socializing” in hotels.

The real incentive for hanging out downstairs, though, is the aesthetics—a 30-foot-long hand-forged blackened-steel fireplace, Jean-Michel Frank–inspired coffee tables and chairs, Christian Liaigre floor lamps, with fabrics and leathers in soft tones of oatmeal, silver and white. It’s light and airy and warm and inviting. One of hip design firm Yabu Pushelberg’s signature spiral staircases leads upstairs. “It is impossible to label this look,” says Schrager. “And rightly so. We are never out for a look. We are out for a feel and an experience.”

Lubricating that experience are often some very playful custom-crafted cocktails, like the High Tea that’s served in a pot for sharing, and the $30 Edition Owl, which comes in a bronze-colored owl-shaped cup, with ELYX vodka, lemon, lavender, raspberries, Ruinart Champagne, and good karma from the $1 from each that goes to wildbirdfund.org for the protection of New York’s birds.

Bar style gets amped up upstairs, where the Clocktower bar serves the same drinks in a buzzy space inspired by New York’s Gilded Age mansions and private clubs, with original mahogany wainscoting, herringbone oak floors and a dense collection of photographs (in opulent gold-leaf frames) of New York street scenes and celebrities. A separate billiards room is a centered on a table upholstered in a color that New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells likened to grape jelly in his recent glowing review of the Clocktower restaurant.

I agree with Wells. Young London chef Jason Atherton serves food that’s more than good enough to compete with the opulent materials, rich colors and intriguing photographs in the dining room.  Standouts include a starter of big-eye tuna tataki, English cucumber, radish, avocado and ponzu, and a tomato salad with Lioni burrata and basil granita.

But no one goes to a hotel just for the dining room. The 273 rooms are spacious and stylish, with high scalloped ceilings that add to the feeling of capaciousness. (The city views from many of them—the building is still among the highest in the neighborhood—certainly don’t hurt in that regard.) Their design respects the building’s historical bones but is unquestionably residential and of-the-moment. Those windows are original, and frame their views just so. Beds have dark walnut headboards and smart built-in walnut platforms with bespoke walnut nightstands. A focal point is the extra-long, deep floating white oak desk, in the style of Jean-Michel Frank, that sits in front of the couch. It’s a workspace, room-service dining table and storage area all in one. Anyone who has logged hours at hotel-room desks that face a blank wall will appreciate this. Leave it to Ian Schrager to reinvent the hotel desk.