The Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad

Rafael Viñoly Architects raised the tower, open since July 2022, on exposed concrete columns above a five-story podium, stacking 219 rooms, 31 suites and 16 penthouse residences over that. It clears five hundred feet, slender enough that oversized windows and precast spandrels are most of what reads from the street. A planted plaza of four thousand square feet fills the corner entry.

Nearly everything in the guestrooms was made for this building, down to a minibar that exists in no other hotel, with terrazzo marble baths and Diptyque's fig scent. The signature suites look downtown, far enough up to take in the Statue of Liberty. The Ritz-Carlton Suite takes 2,100 square feet of the 37th floor, with a media room, a wellness room holding a Peloton and a dressing area of 200 square feet. The Club Lounge sits one floor below, on the 36th.

The public rooms went to specialists, with Lázaro Rosa-Violán on the Bazaar, Rockwell Group on Zaytinya at street level and Martin Brudnizki on the rooftop bar, where onyx and velvet sit against the skyline. Yvonne Force Villareal chose the art in between, by Pat Steir, Ross Bleckner and Donald Baechler. José Andrés runs the restaurants and the bar at the top.

Underground, the spa runs 6,800 square feet across eight treatment rooms, one of them the Primrose, a suite kept for two. Sauna, steam and a gym that never closes sit beside it.

Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos, who developed the building for Flag Luxury Group, wanted a lobby the neighborhood would walk into rather than past. That is what the cart is doing there.