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Daily Mail
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Guests can experience Gilded Age glamour inside New York City's historic Fifth Avenue Hotel
Stepping into Manhattan's Fifth Avenue Hotel feels like going back in time into the Gilded Age, which has been all the rage lately thanks to the HBO Max show of the same name. The Gilded Age was produced by Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, and the period drama has been a hit with viewers who describe the show as Gossip Girl in corsets. Fellowes, who's behind Downton Abbey and Belgravia, is now focused on the fight between new and old money Manhattanites in the 1880s. The torrid lives of America's wealthiest dynasties are suddenly a hot topic once again, with dynasties like the Astors, Roosevelts, Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Rockefellers, on full display. The award-winning show follows fish out of water Marian Brook (played by Meryl Streep 's daughter Louisa Jacobson Gummer) as she moves from Pennsylvania to New York to live with her wealthy aunts Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and Ada Brook (Cynthia Nixon). Viewers aren't just taken in by the characters, they're equally invested in the people living the ultra-wealthy lifestyles during that era in Fifth Avenue mansions. While many of the palatial homes were demolished in the 1920s - later to be replaced with Zara, Nike, and Bergdorf Goodman - some still stand tall. Now, history buffs and fans of the show, can experience their very own Gilded Age vacation thanks to The Fifth Avenue Hotel, which is housed inside of a 19th century NoMad mansion. The Fifth Avenue Hotel is just as opulent as the homes featured on the show, from the elegant yet cozy lobby to the perfectly over-the-top, eclectic décor in both the rooms and pink hallways. The expertly restored property is a member of The Leading Hotels of the World, which is a collection of the most unique independent hotels across the globe, highlighting chic, distinct travel experiences - and this former gilded age mansion certainly stands out. Visitors are given their very own butler who introduces themselves at the beginning of the trip can help them with anything from pressing clothing to hiring a personal photographer. The suites not only have colorful chandeliers, they also boast well-stocked complimentary mini-bars and housekeeping twice a day. The concierge experience is just as luxurious, as they offer reservations at the hottest restaurants in town (it's like you're getting access to your very own opera box). The memorable touches, like bone-inlaid tables and tiger-striped rugs, are thanks to Stockholm-born designer Martin Brudnizki, who's famous for paying tribute to the past and present. The cozy, oversize suites full of colorful, bold designs stand out in a city known for its shoebox size, cookie cutter hotel rooms. Guests might want to take some of the décor home, but it's all one-of-a-kind. Even the restaurant, Café Carmellini, is majestic, with live trees, stunning chandeliers, Art Deco mirrors and blue velvet seating. Diners can imagine the space as a ballroom with guests dancing down below and gossiping up above. The Italian and French restaurant's chef Andrew Carmellini is also behind downtown hot spots Locanda Verde, Lafayette, and the Dutch. The hotel also houses The Portrait Bar, which went viral on TikTok as a date night destination. The intimate cocktail lounge is fittingly covered in photos, paintings, and drawings, as diners sip cocktails described with tongue-in cheek descriptors, like 'not a margarita for margarita drinkers.' The original five-story limestone and brick building was owned by socialite Charlotte Goodridge, who commissioned the original construction in 1856. Then, in 1907, it was redesigned as a bank by landmark architecture firm McKim, Mead & White, who were also behind the Brooklyn Museum and the original Penn Station and designed many houses in Newport, Rhode Island. In fact, they have been credited with defining the signature look of Gilded Age America. Hotel founder Alex Ohebshalom's family bought the building in the 1970s and he focused on restoring the landmark and bringing it back to its glory for its opening in 2023. The hotel is at the intersection of 28th Street and Fifth Avenue, which makes it perfect for tourists eager to visit places like Madison Square Park and the Empire State. It's also walking distance from The Morgan Library & Museum, another must for history devotees. The museum and research library started as the personal library of financier Pierpont Morgan and now houses impressively rare manuscripts. The hotel is so Gilded Age-coded that members of the cast recently fittingly posed for a New York Times photoshoot inside the lavish rooms, which start at $895 per night. Mrs. Astor would surely approve.
Time Out
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
This stylish NoMad hotel was just named New York's best by Travel + Leisure magazine
In a city packed with dazzling hotel openings, heritage icons and scene-stealing rooftops, earning the title of New York's best hotel is no easy feat. But Travel + Leisure readers have spoken—and the winner of this year's World's Best Awards is the opulent, maximalist dreamscape known as the Fifth Avenue Hotel in NoMad. A relative newcomer, the hotel opened in late 2023 and quickly became a favorite for both well-heeled travelers and in-the-know New Yorkers. With interiors by Martin Brudnizki Design Studio, the 153-room property feels like the love child of a Gilded Age mansion and a Wes Anderson set, blending jewel-toned walls, antique curiosities and luxurious amenities (hello, Dyson hairdryers and 'maxi'-bars) into a singular experience. One T+L voter raved, 'Everything was on point from the moment I walked in the door until I left a week later.' But it's not just about good looks. The service at The Fifth Avenue Hotel is as elevated as its design. Guests staying in the Mansion suites, located in the historic 1907 building, originally designed by McKim, Mead & White, are greeted by personal butlers who offer welcome drinks and iPad-powered tutorials on controlling everything from lighting to blinds. It's the kind of place where if your room needs a walkthrough, you know you've made a good choice. Downstairs, the hotel's food and drink offerings are just as seductive. The cozy, wood-paneled Portrait Bar serves meticulously crafted cocktails in a setting that feels like a secret society's private lounge. And the hotel's signature restaurant, Café Carmellini, is helmed by James Beard Award-winning chef Andrew Carmellini, who delivers French-Italian elegance with dishes like duck tortellini and squab en croûte. When it comes to the competition, this year's list was full of shake-ups: None of 2024's top 10 hotels returned, proving just how fast the city's hospitality scene evolves. Other notable entries included Gansevoort Meatpacking at No. 2 and Hotel Barrière Fouquet's New York at No. 3. But it's The Fifth Avenue Hotel that reigns supreme in 2025—and with its intoxicating scent, impeccable service and theatrical flair, it's giving New York something rare: a hotel that feels like an escape, even when you're right in the middle of it all.
Forbes
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Peek Inside ‘Leading Hotels Of The World' With Luxe Travel Book ‘Culture'
Page spread featuring Fifth Avenue Hotel, Manhattan, in 'Culture: The Leading Hotels of the World' Luxury hotels must strike a balance between sweeping you into another world and making you feel at home. Discerning travelers want more than amenities, and seek out hotels that preserve and promote culture. Hotelier Alex Ohebshalom worked closely with Swedish interior architect and product designer Martin Brudnizki to transform a 1907 Italian Renaissance Revival bank by McKim, Mead & White that was erected on the former site of a Gilded Age mansion into a pampering and welcoming environment. The collaborators carefully examined the extant arches, moldings, and other mansion features evoking the period of U.S. history from the 1870s to about 1900 which took its name from Mark Twain's lesser-known political novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, co-written with his friend, and fellow essayist and novelist, Charles Dudley Warner, to preserve the best facets of that bygone era while creating a new 'today' for the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan. While the novel satirizes greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America, Twain – who enjoyed bourbon and was close friends with self-made tycoon Henry H. Rogers – would have been unlikely to refuse an old fashioned from socialite Charlotte Goodridge, who lived in the mansion until her death in 1902. Earlier this month, guests filled The Cellar, a private dining room at the hotel, admiring the walls of geometric marquetry which was popular during the Gilded Age. Enjoying cocktails by The Portrait Bar and passed canape and charcuterie by Chef Andrew Carmellini, as well as a performance by Tony-nominated actress and singer Lorna Courtney, guests indulged in the present moment while the room evoked the past extravagance. 'Culture' and 'Design' books, by Leading Hotels of the World (LHW), in partnership with Phaidon, ... More Monacelli, and New York-based media company The Slowdown, at Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City. The location was perfect for celebrating the launch of Culture, the second volume in an ongoing travel book series by The Leading Hotels of the World (LHW), following Design, in partnership with Phaidon, Monacelli, and New York-based media company The Slowdown, earlier this month. Ohebshalom and Brudnizki envisioned a character when creating the hotel, a flâneur, or a person who strolls around a city observing the world around them while blending in with the crowd. That is often how travelers want to feel in a new city, aware of the environment and not obviously an outsider. Flâneur Hospitality spent a decade restoring the building, preserving the original brick and limestone Renaissance-style palazzo and magnifying it with a 24-story modern glass tower by Perkins Eastman. Timeless elegance and exceptional service abound as you're greeted by the everpresent but never intrusive hospitality experts at De LEurope Amsterdam. It's hard to imagine a reasonable request that's met with anything less than 'of course!' For example, visiting Amsterdam after attending TEFAF-Maastricht – Europe's crown jewel of art fairs, some 125 miles away in the southernmost part of the Netherlands, close to the borders with Belgium and Germany – demands a continuation of grand tradition. Time after time, De LEurope Amsterdam exceeds expectations. Encounter centuries of history, beginning in 1482, when Emperor Maximilian I ordered the construction of stone walls and a fortress to protect the town from attacks. The main tower, Het Rondeel, stood on the site of present-day De L'Europe Amsterdam. The location's hospitality legacy began in 1638, when an inn was built partly on the foundations of the fort. This simple guest house later adorned the side along the Amstel with a wall decorated with Renaissance flair. After numerous closures and renovations, H. J. Wolters reopened Het Rondeel in1845, as the first hotel in Amsterdam that served and catered to families. Het Rondeel was auctioned to a bank in 1894, and the building remained empty for two years before the Dutch Hotel Company demolished it and built a new hotel. The company agreed to purchase the former Hotel de L'Europe on the Prins Hendrikkade in exchange for the name. Mr. H. Martins, the managing director of the original Hotel de L'Europe was appointed the same role at the new location on the Nieuwe Doelenstraat, which opened in 1896. Throughout the century, the hotel was expanded and refurbished to meet dynamic demands of luxury travelers. Dutch businessman Alfred 'Freddy' Heineken, a leader of the brewing empire created in 1864 by his grandfather Gerard Adriaan Heineken, was a frequent guest of the hotel in the 1950's, and he eventually bought it, making De L'Europe the first and only family-owned luxury hotel in Amsterdam. By 1992, the hotel was remodeled to offer 100 modern rooms, two restaurants, a bar, a terrace on the Amstel river, several halls, a fitness center, a shop, and a business center. Art lovers will appreciate the easy walk to world-leading museums, such as Rijksmuseum, the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history, Stedelijk, a museum for modern art, and contemporary art and design, and the Van Gogh Museum, dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries. Man adjusts painting at De L'Europe. Amsterdam, The Netherlands A comprehensive redesign in 2020 enabled De L'Europe to emerge from the pandemic in its current grandeur. Amsterdam-based interior design firm Nicemakers restyled the rooms, public areas, private event rooms, three restaurants, and the bar, to pay homage to the rich cultural history while boasting contemporary creature comforts. Let Culture serve as your travel companion. The book itself lends to a leisurely study of the world's best hotels, drawing readers into an opulent chair – perhaps a fauteuil or a bergère – while admiring its plush cover. 3-D view of 'Culture', the second volume in an ongoing travel book series by The Leading Hotels of ... More the World (LHW), in partnership with Phaidon, Monacelli, and New York-based media company The Slowdown ''Culture' is as hard to define as 'beauty' or 'taste,' but we know it when we see it,' As Pico Iyer writes in the forward, 'It is that hidden treasure that goes beyond simply seeing the sights and gives us a new pair of eyes.' Culture gives readers exactly that. This compelling volume dives beneath the surface of glamour, offering a deeper, more considered definition of luxury.' If you regard museum-quality masterpieces, works of fine art and design, and high jewelry representing 7,000 years of art history as the epitome of culture, plan your trip to TEFAF-Maaastrict 2026, and book at stay at De L'Europe Amsterdam to continue to your art world journey.
Forbes
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
After Nearly A Century, New York's Pierre Hotel Gets The Restaurant It Deserves
New York is in the throes of a hotel restaurant renaissance, with the opening of Café Carmellini in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, The Otter in The Manner, Brass in The Evelyn, Vestry in the Dominick and others. By a renaissance I mean that hotel dining rooms of the 19th and early 20th centuries like the original Ritz- Carlton, The Plaza, the Waldorf-Astoria and the St. Regis were once held in the highest esteem. But by the 1950s, the explosion of exciting, free-standing restaurants of individual excellence helped put the kibosh on impersonal hotel dining rooms as dreary alternatives. So, I'm delighted to find so many new hotels are opening so many wonderful restaurants run by top chefs all over town, as I am with the revivification of others that have brought in new chefs and new concepts. The Pierre Hotel is an exemplar of the latter, with has long been one of the city's most historic and elegant spots, opening in 1930 on Fifth Avenue across from Central Park. For decades its Café Pierre, with its trompe l'oeuil cloudy sky ceiling by Valerian Rybar, was a major watering hole for New York society; Al Pacino's tango scene in the film Scent of a Woman was shot in The Pierre's Cotillion Room. Since 2005 under the control of the Taj Group, the space that is now Perrine has had what seems like a shift of focus every few years or so, none successful: at one point it was a snooty offshoot of London's Le Caprice, then an Italian trattoria named Sirio managed by the Maccioni family, who hired Vincent Garofalo as executive chef. There was a brief tilt towards modern Indian cuisine. Now, with Garofalo back in the kitchen, the menu reflects a balance of contemporary American, French and Italian dishes. You enter through shining brass doors into a long dining room as sleek as ever, with a classy bar up front, and done in tones of gray, black, white and silver to give it a sophisticated ambiance that is very much New York in spirit, like the white bow on a Tiffany box. The fine lighting, thick tablecloths, settings and stemware are first class, and the waitstaff, since my last visit a few years back, is now measurably improved in its amiable professionalism. The wine list, which is quite modest, has not. Lobster bisque at Perrine Perrine Perrine's clientele ranges widely, from Upper East Siders, hotel guests and tourists who include stylish young Japanese women toting designer bags from the high-fashion shops along the nexus of Madison, 57th Street and Fifth Avenue. Chef Garofalo's menu is clearly composed to please all of them, full of classic dishes like French onion soup and salade Niçoise along with American favorites like lobster rolls as well as steak au poivre and the Pierre burger. Given his background, the chef also makes four main course pastas. I was especially pleased by two appetizers found in abundance around Manhattan, because Garofalo's lobster bisque has the deep, briny flavor of the shellfish, enriched with a citrus-laced crème fraîche and a pretty green swirl of tarragon oil; tuna tartare is impeccably balanced between very flavorful, dark red tuna chunks and the subtlety of many seasonings and Dijon mustard, along with thin haricot verts, olives and basil-scented pistou. 'Coronation Chicken' takes its name from a retro dish created in 1952 for the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II, made of tender poached chicken with a curry mayonnaise, raisins, apple, cilantro and a dash of chili oil. It was unexpectedly delicious and deserves a wider audience. The warm lobster roll came with plenty of butter-poached meat in am equally buttery brioche roll with crisp French fries, and at $34 it's a refined match for lobster rolls sold for an equal price out of seafood shacks up and down Long Island. Among the pastas I tried, I thoroughly enjoyed the ravioli stuffed with ricotta and spinach dressed with a creamy Alfredo-style sauce. House-made tagliatelle with some of that lobster bisque and fava beans livened with tarragon is as sumptuous as it sounds. The Pierre Burger Perrine The 'Pierre Burger' toes the current line of overstuffed, overwrought, adequate burgers in fine dining rooms in New York, but the roasted half chicken with baby potatoes, mushrooms and salsa verde was a textbook example of how this bird can be ennobled with finesse. Half a dozen fat scallops are arrayed with a highly complementary sweet and sour puree sweet corn springtime's asparagus and a lemon-saffron sauce. Hotels, which must cater to weddings and anniversaries, usually excel at desserts, and at the Perrine they most certainly do with items like Pavlova (now having something of its own renaissance), the pretty pink meringue confection made to honor the prima Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, as well as a peach Melba similarly honoring Dame Nellie Melba, and a rum-soaked baba with citrus cream. For nearly a century now The Pierre has never lost its cosmopolitan luster, and Perrine, now re-incarnated with Chef Garofalo, matches that appeal as a restaurant of convincing posh and good taste. And a good lunch spot in which to show off your shopping bags. Perrine 2 East 61st Street 212-940-8195 Open for breakfast daily, lunch Mon.-Sat., Brunch Sun., dinner nightly.
