The Surrey, A Corinthia Hotel

Schwartz & Gross finished the sixteen-story building at 20 East 76th Street in 1926 as an apartment hotel, and for most of the century that followed it ran as a discreet address rather than a busy one, with Bette Davis, Claudette Colbert and Ethel Merman among those who stayed. The Reuben Brothers bought it in 2020, and it reopened in October 2024 as Corinthia's first hotel in North America, the top six floors cut into fourteen private residences. The masonry was restored rather than replaced.

Martin Brudnizki's studio keyed each of the hundred rooms and suites to a single color, terra cotta or springtime green or light blue, carried through the silk on the walls and into the inlays on the cabinets beneath handmade Murano chandeliers. Deluxe rooms start at 315 square feet and the largest suites run past 800, with marble bathrooms, Frette linen and a speaker set into the wall. The four signature suites include a dedicated butler.

Guest rooms take floors three to ten, which leaves the second to a spa of 2,500 square feet where Sisley Paris keeps two treatment rooms, a sauna, a salt room and a terrace of its own.

The art in the halls came through VISTO in Paris, New York work made from the 1920s onward. The Met, the Frick and the Guggenheim are all a short walk. Central Park is closer.