The Bowery is the place to go in New York for a sense of both contemporary relevance and old-world elegance. Sink into an armchair in the amber-lit Lobby Bar on the ground floor on arrival, with its rich Persian rugs, dark wooden beams, and glowing fireplace. There’s no better place to take a meeting or have a drink. As for the rooms, you will want to live in them.
Location & history
The hotel’s New York ‘factory Gothic’ façade is the street’s standout building, the Bowery’s various blocks fitting together like a sculpture. This is one of the finer creations of Sean MacPherson and Eric Goode, who spearheaded the Hotel Chelsea’s recent reinvention and own many of the city’s best boutique hotels: the Ludlow, the Marlton, the Maritime, the Jane. They specialise in reinvention – the Maritime was once the National Maritime Union’s headquarters – and the Bowery Hotel is no different.
The pair built the hotel in 2007 by stripping back a tall drab building that had stood on the site. MacPherson and Goode thought that the building, for all its defects, had ‘good bones’. They hung a brick-and-glass hotel on its frame. At the time they opened, the surrounding neighbourhood (after which the hotel is named) was still a run-down dive of an area – one artist described it as a ‘demilitarized zone’.
Now it seems ideally located on an arterial road that borders multiple neighbourhoods: SoHo and Washington Square are a short walk to the west, with the East Village and the Lower East Side also close. Here are the streets where Manhattan now lives and breathes. This is where you want to eat and drink and wander. The nearest metro station is Bleecker Street, 300 metres away.
Rooms & suites
The Bowery is 17 stories high. Spear’s stayed in two glorious corner suites on the third and seventh floors. These Studio Suites are double-aspect: panelled floor-to-ceiling windows fill the walls. What else will you find? Big enveloping patterned curtains of an unknown but opulent drape. A circular table and chairs by the window make a ready study. A velvet sofa and a leather-covered studded ottoman.
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A television when and as required. Big light rugs that cover the hardwood floor. A bed flanked with wall lamps that extend on springs. A great mirror that multiplies the light filling the room and long white-painted floorboards that run the length of the ceiling. The marbled bathroom includes a vast walk-in shower.
Choose from a queen or king – there are deluxe and superior versions available – along with suites that range up to a Penthouse Terrace. The Bowery isn’t a hotel where height matters as much as it might elsewhere. The street on which the hotel sits is wide and the other buildings are low for Manhattan – you’re downtown – so even a room on the third floor gets plenty of light. Try and face the street if you can. The charming front desk staff will hand you a fine and heavy fin-de-siècle tasselled key on arrival.
If you can afford to stay here, do. Check in is from 3pm and check-out is, mercifully, at noon. Breakfast is best taken in bed.
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Clientele & service
For anyone so inclined, the city’s cultural elite regularly passes through – Spear’s caught Chris Rock on his way out of the lobby bar – and the hotel plays host to many industry after-parties on the hotel’s extraordinary wood-beamed, brick-walled, tiled first-floor terrace. The staff are solicitous and helpful without being intrusive. The hotel’s celebrity guests stay at the Bowery for a reason. The staff will offer you all the respect and discretion such guests value. Families can stay here, but the space is better designed for couples or solo travellers.
Dining & amenities
Gemma – an Italian trattoria run by chef Andrea Taormina since 2019 – is a beautifully laid-out space that doubles as a destination restaurant. The outside tables are a fine place to sit and have a drink. Inside booths and tables fill up quickly on busy evenings. Spear’s can recommend the Primi classics – burrata, cavolo Nero – as well as a range of homemade pasta and pizzas. The branzino and a Bowery burger top the main dishes. Expect rustic, seasonal cuisine in a relaxed setting.
Even the small fitness centre on the ground floor doesn’t deviate from the house style: you will be working out on a vast Persian rug, surrounded by green-and-maroon tiled walls, great arched windows and antique mirrors. The Bowery is not a swimming pool sort of place.
Verdict
Stay here to step back into a heightened 20th century world, an oasis of bohemia in the heart of downtown that manages to be no less luxurious than an uptown Park Avenue hotel.
Prices for a double room from $835 (£635) per night. 335 Bowery, New York City. theboweryhotel.com. reservations@bohonyc.com. T: +1.212.505.9100
