The Peninsula New York

Hiss and Weekes finished the limestone tower on the southwest corner of Fifth and 55th in 1905, four blocks below the park, and it opened as the Gotham. Three years later it was in foreclosure, the Presbyterian church across 55th Street having kept it from a liquor license. Metropolitan Life took it over in 1932, and after a spell in the 1980s as Maxim's de Paris, the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels bought it in 1988 and the city landmarked it the year after. The pianist Paderewski lived here for sixteen years.

Bill Rooney Studio worked through all 219 rooms and suites in 2024, trading the grays for silvery sofas, topaz-blue curtains and geometric carpet, and dressing the beds in white-on-white Quagliotti jacquard beneath headboards molded into something close to a pair of wings. Cream marble runs through the bathrooms, where black stone sinks sit under alabaster sconces and the bath products, made for the hotel by Mackenzie Reilly, carry quince, peony and musk. Lighting and temperature answer to a bedside panel.

The spa takes the 21st and 22nd floors, a couples' suite among the treatment rooms, and the pool runs forty-two feet under glass, windows on three sides setting the swim against the cornices and the skyline behind them. A terrace of loungers opens a floor below in summer.

Down in the Palm Court hangs a triptych Ricardo Mazal painted for the room. Nothing here is trying to be new.