In Brief: The Algonquin Hotel in New York City has completed a guestroom renovation, signaling continued capital investment by historic properties to maintain relevance and appeal in a highly competitive urban hospitality market.
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Photo Credit: Michael Kleinberg, The Algonquin Hotel
The Algonquin Hotel, Autograph Collection, has completed a multi-year renovation of its guestrooms, elevators and corridors while remaining operational.
CRÈME / Jun Aizaki Architecture & Design, a Brooklyn-based interior design firm, led the renovation in collaboration with LUCID, the design and development arm of Highgate Hotels. The project did not alter the hotel’s historic footprint.
Guestrooms and suites now include custom triptych artwork featuring Al Hirschfeld pieces curated with The Al Hirschfeld Foundation and its director, David Leopold. The artwork includes a gold leaf-accented illustration of Central Park exclusive to the hotel.
Corridors display archival Hirschfeld works covering theater, music, literature and popular culture. Each floor has a separate collection. The selected pieces span Hirschfeld’s 80-year career in New York City; some had not been publicly displayed in decades, while others were sourced from the foundation’s archives for the hotel.
The redesign includes room signage modeled on oversized luggage tags. The signs feature 181 individually curated quotes from figures who created or influenced the hotel. Each guestroom has a different quote, including quotations attributed to Kermit the Frog, Maya Angelou, John Leguizamo, The Notorious B.I.G., Dorothy Parker and The Vicious Circle.
The design incorporates Art Deco references and jazz-inspired patterns. Corridor carpeting features patterns that reference the movement and improvisation of music and the Algonquin Round Table era.
Other changes include brass fixtures, layered lighting, custom marble-topped furnishings inspired by the hotel’s original stairwells and integrated architectural elements. Materials and finishes include walnut, ebonized oak, aged bronze and charcoal velvet headboards. The color palette includes deep and light celadon, peacock green, charcoal and soft neutrals.
The Blue Bar Restaurant & Lounge has added menu items and cocktails and introduced redesigned menus created with The Al Hirschfeld Foundation. The menus feature archival Hirschfeld drawings.
The 181-room hotel opened in 1902 and hosted the Algonquin Round Table in the 1920s, whose participants included Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Harold Ross, Alexander Woollcott, Franklin Adams and Robert Sherwood. The New Yorker magazine was conceived there.