New York City’s 25 Most Storied Hotels
A sailors’ home that took in Titanic survivors, a hat factory, two former banks, and the tower where Caruso sang from his window.
New York knocks its buildings down, but the ones that survive make good hotels. This list has the hotel the Beatles hid out in, a sailors’ home that sheltered Titanic survivors, a hat factory, two former banks, and the Times Square tower where Caruso once sang from the window.
The list is grouped by character, not ranked. Each hotel’s name links to its own site, where the rate is current and you book direct.
The grand old ones
The Plaza · Fifth Avenue at Central Park
The Plaza opened in 1907, a French Renaissance château by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, who had already built the Dakota. The Beatles stayed here on their first trip to America in February 1964, for the Ed Sullivan Show. It is the fictional home of Eloise, the girl in Kay Thompson’s 1955 books, whose portrait still hangs in the lobby.
Waldorf Astoria New York · Park Avenue
The Art Deco tower on Park Avenue opened in 1931 as the largest and tallest hotel in the world. The first Waldorf and Astoria hotels had stood on Fifth Avenue, on the ground the Empire State Building later took over. This Waldorf closed in 2017 for a full renovation and reopened in 2025 after eight years dark. The Waldorf salad was invented at the original hotel back in the 1890s.
The St. Regis New York · Fifth Avenue at 55th
John Jacob Astor IV built the St. Regis and opened it in 1904; he went down with the Titanic eight years later. The King Cole Bar is built around Maxfield Parrish’s 1906 mural of Old King Cole, painted for Astor’s other hotel, the Knickerbocker, and moved here in 1932. The bar says the Bloody Mary made its American debut here in 1934, under the name Red Snapper. Salvador Dalí spent his winters at the hotel through the 1960s.
The Pierre · Fifth Avenue at 61st
The Pierre opened in 1930, started by a Corsican restaurateur, went bankrupt in the Depression, and was bought by J. Paul Getty in 1938. On the night of January 2, 1972, robbers emptied its safe-deposit boxes of a reported three million dollars, one of the largest hotel heists ever. India’s Taj Hotels has run it since 2005.
The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel · Madison Avenue at 76th
The Carlyle opened on Madison Avenue in 1930. John F. Kennedy kept an apartment on the 34th floor, and during his presidency the hotel picked up the nickname the New York White House. The murals in Bemelmans Bar were painted in 1947 by Ludwig Bemelmans, who wrote the Madeline books, reportedly in trade for a year’s lodging for his family. Bobby Short played the Café Carlyle for thirty-six years.
Lotte New York Palace · Madison Avenue at 50th
The hotel’s front is the Villard Houses, a group of 1880s brownstone mansions McKim, Mead & White built for the railroad financier Henry Villard. The tower behind them opened in 1980 as the Helmsley Palace. Korea’s Lotte Group bought the hotel in 2015 and renamed it.
Warwick New York · West 54th at Sixth Avenue
William Randolph Hearst built the Warwick in 1926, and his companion, the actress Marion Davies, kept a suite. Cary Grant used it as his New York home for a dozen years. The Beatles stayed here on their 1965 and 1966 visits and gave their press conferences in the hotel.
Ink, bohemians and the Round Table
The Algonquin Hotel Times Square · West 44th Street
The Algonquin opened in 1902, and from 1919 it was the home of the Round Table, the lunch circle of Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Alexander Woollcott. Harold Ross, one of the regulars, started The New Yorker out of that circle in 1925. A cat has lived in the lobby since the 1930s — the males all called Hamlet, the females Matilda.
Hotel Chelsea · 222 West 23rd Street
The Chelsea went up in 1884 as one of the city’s first co-op apartment houses and became a hotel in 1905. Dylan Thomas was living here when he collapsed in 1953, Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey in residence, and Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe had the room she wrote about in Just Kids. It closed to guests in 2011 and reopened in 2022 after an eleven-year renovation.
Library Hotel · Madison Avenue at 41st
Each of the ten guest floors is given a Dewey Decimal category, with more than six thousand books shelved by subject through the rooms. The owners of the Dewey system sued over the idea in 2003; the case settled and the hotel took a license. It stands a block from the main branch of the New York Public Library, which is the whole conceit.
The Iroquois New York · 49 West 44th Street
The Iroquois opened in 1900 on West 44th Street, the same block as the Algonquin. James Dean lived here from 1951 to 1953, scraping by as a young actor. A suite now carries his name.
Used to be something else
The High Line Hotel · Tenth Avenue at 20th
The hotel is the 1895 dormitory wing of the General Theological Seminary, converted in 2013. The seminary’s land was given by Clement Clarke Moore, who taught there and is credited with writing A Visit from St. Nicholas. The brick close went up long before the elevated railway the hotel takes its name from.
TWA Hotel · JFK Airport
The hotel is built around Eero Saarinen’s 1962 TWA Flight Center at JFK, which sat empty after the airline folded in 2001. It opened in 2019, the only hotel on the airport grounds, with two new room wings flanking the old terminal. A 1958 Lockheed Constellation is parked outside and serves as a cocktail bar.
The Jane · Jane Street at the Hudson
The Jane was built in 1908 as a home for sailors, by the architect who designed the main building on Ellis Island. Surviving crew of the Titanic were put up here after the sinking in 1912 and held a memorial service for the dead. It reopened as the Jane in 2008, its tiny wood-paneled rooms fitted out like ship’s cabins.
Refinery Hotel · West 38th Street
The Refinery is in a 1912 hat factory on what was the Garment District’s millinery row. It opened as a hotel in 2013, with the factory’s columns and steel windows left in place. Its rooftop bar looks straight at the Empire State Building.
Casa Cipriani New York · The Battery
Casa Cipriani occupies the Battery Maritime Building, a 1909 ferry terminal at the southern tip of Manhattan. Ferries ran to Brooklyn from its slips until 1938. It opened as a hotel and club in 2021.
Bryant Park Hotel · West 40th at Bryant Park
The hotel is in the American Radiator Building, Raymond Hood’s 1924 tower of black brick trimmed in gold. Georgia O’Keeffe painted it in 1927 as Radiator Building — Night, New York. It became a hotel in 2001.
Wythe Hotel · Williamsburg, Brooklyn
The Wythe is in a 1901 barrel factory on the Williamsburg waterfront in Brooklyn. It opened in 2012, keeping the pine beams and arched factory windows, and its rooftop bar looks across the East River to Manhattan.
The Fifth Avenue Hotel · Fifth Avenue at 28th
The corner building went up in 1907 for the Second National Bank, by McKim, Mead & White. It opened as a hotel in 2023, joining the old bank to a new tower behind it. The name brings back the first Fifth Avenue Hotel, which stood on Madison Square from 1859 until 1908.
The Beekman, A Thompson Hotel · 5 Beekman Street
The Beekman is in the Temple Court Building of the early 1880s, one of the oldest skyscrapers left in the city. It is built around a nine-story interior atrium, under a pyramid of glass, ringed by cast-iron balconies that were boarded up for decades. The offices stood empty before the restoration opened the hotel in 2016.
Nine Orchard · 9 Orchard Street
The hotel is in the Jarmulowsky Bank Building, a 1912 tower built for an immigrant banker on the Lower East Side. Sender Jarmulowsky died the year it was finished, and the bank, which served the neighborhood’s immigrants, failed in 1917. It reopened as Nine Orchard in 2022.
Second acts
The Knickerbocker · Broadway at 42nd
John Jacob Astor IV built the Knickerbocker at Broadway and 42nd Street, and it opened in 1906. Enrico Caruso lived here, and on Armistice Day in 1918 he sang to the Times Square crowd from his window. The hotel closed in 1920 and spent ninety years as offices — Newsweek among them — before reopening in 2015.
Wyndham New Yorker · Eighth Avenue at 34th
The New Yorker opened in 1930 with 2,500 rooms across 43 Art Deco floors, the largest hotel in the city at the time. Nikola Tesla lived out his last decade in room 3327 and died there in 1943. The Unification Church bought the building in 1976; it returned to full hotel use in 1994 and joined Wyndham in 2014.
Ace Hotel New York · Broadway at 29th
The Ace is in the 1904 Hotel Breslin building at Broadway and 29th Street. It opened in 2009 as the brand’s first New York hotel, with interiors by Roman and Williams built from salvaged and vintage pieces. Its lobby became one of the defining laptop-and-coffee rooms of the 2010s.
The Roxy Hotel · Sixth Avenue at White Street
The Roxy opened in 2000 as the Tribeca Grand, around an eight-story atrium, and took its current name in 2015. It nods to the showman Samuel ‘Roxy’ Rothafel, whose 1927 Roxy Theatre was billed as the Cathedral of the Motion Picture. Downstairs it holds a jazz club, the Django, and a repertory cinema.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are these hotels ranked?
No. The groups sort them by character, and the order within each group carries no meaning.
What made a hotel interesting enough for this list?
A story. Every entry was built as something else, survived something, or made its own history — a bank, a factory, a sailors’ home, a writers’ hangout. Comfort alone did not qualify a hotel.
Why are there no prices?
Rates change daily and a priced list goes stale in a month. Every hotel name links to its own site, where the rate is current and you book direct.
Which hotel puts me closest to the day trips on this site?
Most day trips from the city leave by train from Grand Central or Penn Station. The Midtown hotels — the Knickerbocker, the Library Hotel, the Algonquin — sit within a few blocks of one or the other.
Do the small hotels book out faster than the grand ones?
Usually. The smaller houses — the Iroquois, the Library Hotel, the High Line — hold fewer rooms and fill first. Book those before the grand towers.