Royalton Hotel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The building was built in 1898 as the exclusive residential Hotel Royalton. Its design is unique because it is one of the first buildings which enables street-level passage from one block to the next. It was reopened by Ian Schrager as the Royalton Hotel on October 10, 1988 with design by the renowned designer Philippe Starck. It was conceived as "the hotel of the '90s". Where nightclubs and discotheques were the center of social activity in New York in the '70s, and the way restaurants were in the '80s, Mr. Schrager saw hotel lobbies as the definitive social hub of the '90s. Royalton's lobby is "a new kind of gathering place", one that redefines, with a decidedly '90s flavor, what its owner calls "lobby socializing". Royalton is now part of the Morgans Hotel Group collection of hotels.