Hotel description

Our Tablet Spy program offers the chance to get early looks at the most promising new hotels. If you’re willing to take the risks associated with staying in a hotel that’s not officially open yet — unfinished spaces, noisy construction, inexperienced service — then you’ll be rewarded with the chance to help decide whether the finished hotel will earn a place on Tablet Hotels.
It’s as they’re always saying about London: if you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere. The Firmdale Group has quietly assembled what might be the most impressive single-city roster of hotels anywhere in the world — any one of the six has, depending on your taste in neighborhood, a legitimate shot at being the best in London. And now, with the Crosby Street Hotel, they’re exporting their particular brand of stylish luxury to no less a city than New York, one of the only places in the world that can challenge London in terms of being an absolute bastard of a place to run a hotel.

The location, if you don’t know your SoHo, is one block east of Broadway and two blocks south of Houston, in an area that’s retail and nightlife heaven, but until now rather underserved by hoteliers. It’s a new build, surprisingly enough, but one that melds seamlessly with the century-old industrial aesthetic of the neighborhood; the full-length windows and the grit of the city outside provide the perfect counterpoint to the colorful and idiosyncratically elegant interiors. In best Firmdale style, the luxurious privacy of the rooms is balanced by a multitude of social spaces, from bar to courtyard to private cinema to drawing rooms — the Crosby Street Hotel will be a SoHo meeting point, day and night. Not a bad first attempt.