Crosby Street Hotel

The Crosby Street Hotel was the Firmdale group's first New York outpost, and it carries designer Kit Kemp's signature into a quiet cobbled SoHo block: bold prints, sculptural headboards, full-height warehouse windows, and art everywhere — nothing beige survives. No two rooms read alike, which is the whole Firmdale argument.

Downstairs it runs like an English drawing room transplanted to a cast-iron district, with a proper afternoon tea, a sculpture-dotted garden, and a plush screening room with its own film program. It is the rare design hotel that is playful rather than severe, on one of SoHo's last genuinely calm streets.