The lobby bar is the most important room in the hotel.
Not the suite. Not the restaurant. Not the rooftop. The lobby bar — the room you pass through first, the room that sets the temperature for everything that follows, the room that, when it is designed with genuine intention, belongs as much to the neighborhood as it does to the hotel.
This is New York Issue No. 01. Five rooms. Five different answers to the same question: what does a lobby bar owe the city it sits inside?
Cobalt carpet. Soaring marble columns. The gold disc bar centrepiece rising against deep blue paneling. Amber drapes flooding the restored Beaux-Arts ballroom with afternoon light. Rockwell Group returned to the building they designed in 2000. $100M renovation, 2025.
The Living Room at W Union Square is the clearest statement in this issue of what a lobby bar can be when it is programmed, not just designed. Rockwell Group returned to the 1911 Guardian Life Building, the Beaux-Arts landmark it first transformed into W New York — Union Square in 2000, two years after designing the original W Hotel on Lexington Avenue. — and built a room that operates on multiple frequencies simultaneously. By day, Devoción runs a coffee bar from the same space where cocktails are served by night. The room doesn't change. The architecture simply does more work.
The physical room is extraordinary. Cobalt blue carpet runs the full floor of the restored ballroom. Marble columns and ornate capitals stand at their original scale. The gold disc bar centrepiece rises against deep blue paneling at the room's center. Amber drapes catch the afternoon light from the tall windows overlooking Union Square Park — the same park whose seasonal palette Rockwell used to set the room's entire color story. A Shantell Martin mural climbs the grand staircase.
The programming calendar — DJ sets, art activations, live music weekly — gives the neighborhood a standing reason to be here regardless of whether they have a key. That combination of architectural permanence and cultural programming is precisely what separates a lobby bar from a lobby lounge. One is a room. The other is a destination.
A permanent full moon overhead. Olive-green arched bookshelves curving the room's circumference. Burnt sienna velvet, a flamenco portrait, mosaic floors, tropical plants. The lobby bar as sensory novel. José Andrés Group, 2023.
Bazaar Bar is described by the José Andrés Group as a lobby bar with a permanent view of the full moon — and that is exactly what it is. The sculptural ceiling installation, vast and textured like coral or dried seafoam, dominates the room before anything else registers. It is the kind of design decision that changes the social temperature of a space permanently: everyone who enters looks up, and looking up together is a form of shared experience that most hotel bars never achieve.
Below it, the room is built with equal intention. Olive-green arched bookshelves curve the full circumference, each arch framing a backlit library. Burnt sienna velvet seating, a flamenco portrait in the niche, mosaic floors, tropical plants softening the formality. The bar's concept — drawn from the cultural intersection of Japan and Spain, inspired by the 17th-century voyage of Hasekura Tsunenaga — gives the cocktail program a framework that is genuinely felt rather than merely narrated on the menu.
Within José Andrés’s three-venue operation at the hotel, Bazaar Bar occupies the quietest register, far removed from the energy of Zaytinya and the spectacle of Nubeluz high above Madison Square Park.. It is designed for the transition hour: the afternoon meeting that becomes an early drink, the nightcap that extends the evening. The moon is always there. The room is always open to it.
Dark mahogany paneling. Fifty-plus portraits covering every wall. A carved stone fireplace. Crimson velvet. A backlit bar wall loaded with bottles. The warmth of a private Italian villa arrived on Fifth Avenue. Martin Brudnizki Design Studio, 2023.
The Portrait Bar feels as though it predates you — and it is designed to feel that way. Martin Brudnizki Design Studio built the space around a collection of over 50 portraits: paintings, photographs, and prints covering the dark mahogany paneling from dado to cornice. The bar derives its name from this collection. The portraits are not decorative in the conventional sense. They are the room's social contract — a statement that this space has always had regulars, has always been occupied by people worth remembering, and that you are simply the latest arrival in a long story.
The carved stone fireplace, the crimson velvet armchairs, the antique mirrors, the woven rugs on dark oak floors, the gold-lit bar wall — each element reads as discovered rather than specified. The effect evokes the refined atmosphere of London's great hotel bars filtered through the warmth of an Italian villa. On Fifth Avenue, steps from Madison Square Park, the contrast with the street outside is intentional and complete.
The cocktail program, led by Darryl Chan, earned The Portrait Bar recognition at No. 93 on North America's 50 Best Bars extended list in 2025. The Gilded Age bones of The Fifth Avenue Hotel provide the foundation. Brudnizki provided the soul.
The former bank teller hall. Pink Tennessee marble floors and Botticino marble walls restored using original 1912 blueprints. The grand arched mahogany bar surround. Botanical-print chairs, blush banquettes, fresh flowers on every table. Nine Orchard, 2022.
The Swan Room makes its argument before you reach the bar. The room — the former teller hall of the Jarmulowsky Bank, a 1912 Beaux-Arts tower at Canal and Orchard restored using original blueprints and archival photographs — announces itself with a rehabilitated ornamental ceiling, pink Tennessee marble floors, and Botticino marble walls that the hotel itself compares to Grand Central Terminal. This is not a room that needed a designer to make it interesting. It needed a designer wise enough to leave it alone.
The Swan Room is that room. Blush velvet banquettes snake through the center of the space. Botanical-print chairs cluster around dark wood tables. The grand arched mahogany bar surround frames the bar the way a theatre's proscenium frames a stage. Above the arch, the original bank clock. Fresh flowers on every surface. Bar staff in white jackets. The room makes you gasp as soon as you walk in — and then keeps delivering.
Nine Orchard received two Michelin Keys in the 2024 Michelin Guide hotel selection. The New York Times called it the hotel that Dimes Square deserves. The Swan Room is the reason.
Crimson velvet drapes drawn to the ceiling. Tropical palms breaking the darkness. A glowing backlit bar wall. Candlelit intimacy at every table. Found through the Art Deco lobby of The Evelyn. Islyn Studio, 2023.
The Tusk Bar is accessed through the Art Deco lobby of The Evelyn Hotel — a historic NoMad building that carries its era in its bones — and the transition from the street into the room is one of the more deliberate arrivals in this issue. The lobby is the corridor. The Tusk Bar is the destination. Islyn Studio designed the space to marry the spirit of the roaring twenties with the convivial attitude of a mid-century cocktail party. The result is a room that feels specific in time without being costumed.
Crimson velvet drapes, drawn from floor to ceiling, divide the room into the intimate pockets that make the difference between a bar and a scene. Tropical palms break the darkness throughout the space. The backlit bar wall, loaded with bottles and framed like a cabinet of curiosities, glows warmly at the center of the room. Candlelit tables, a mix of low lounge seating and upright cocktail positions, the particular hush of a room that has decided to take its atmosphere seriously.
The cocktail program focuses on bright takes on classics built around small-production spirits. The raw bar and seafood-driven small plates come from Jeremiah Stone and Fabián von Hauske Valtierra — the Lower East Side chef duo behind Contra and Wildair. Esquire named it one of the Best Bars in America in 2024. On any given evening, the room earns it.