Casa Cipriani New York

Walker and Morris finished the Battery Maritime Building in 1909, a Beaux-Arts ferry house in iron and copper that the city landmarked in 1967 and that spent later decades holding municipal paperwork. In the conversion completed in 2021, Marvel rebuilt the third and fourth floors into guestrooms and set a glass addition on the water-facing elevation to carry the club above, with Thierry Despont's office taking the interiors. Of the Great Hall's 130-foot glass laylight only a failing steel grid had survived, so the pattern was drawn back from old photographs.

Twenty-eight rooms and nineteen suites fill those two floors, finished in custom Italian mahogany with marble bathrooms, walk-in wardrobes and Art Deco in the detailing, and turned toward the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge or the Statue of Liberty. Many suites open onto private terraces set under pergolas, and on the Garden Suite the patio is larger than the suite, 807 square feet against 755. The two Presidential Suites, Roebling and Bartholdi, carry wraparound terraces and Loro Piana interiors.

A room key opens the club and the wellness floors for the length of the stay, access that is otherwise a matter of membership. The house car runs drop-offs within twelve blocks, shoes are shined daily, and the Times or the Journal arrives with the morning. The boats keep leaving below.