The Whitby Hotel

Stonehill Taylor drew the tower, eighteen stories of limestone set with steel-framed windows that run floor to ceiling, stepped back as it climbs so the upper suites collect corner terraces. It opened in March 2017, the tenth hotel from Tim and Kit Kemp and their second in New York. Central Park is two blocks up.

Kit Kemp did the interiors, and no two of the 86 rooms repeat. Walls come lined in fabric, and the headboards are embroidered for this hotel alone, each one different. Six junior terrace suites on the twelfth and fourteenth floors open onto corners of the skyline, and the Whitby Suite takes the whole top floor, two bedrooms and a pair of terraces. Every room keeps an upholstered dressmaker's mannequin dressed in the fabrics of the scheme around it, a habit that began at the Kemps' first London hotel when the budget ran out before the art did. It has become the group's emblem.

The ground floor carries alabaster plinths by Stephen Cox and a woven panel by Hermione Skye hung over the reception desk, and the drawing room, kept for residents, has a fireplace and an honesty bar. An English garden fills the courtyard. Below the street sits a cinema wired for Dolby Atmos and 4K projection. Less hotel than townhouse.