Ace Hotel and Swim Club
Ace Hotel reinvents the urban hotel for the people who make cities interesting. We crave experience more than hospitality clichés. We are curious about the historic buildings we inhabit, and let them guide us to someplace both fresh and familiar.
Ace is the low card and the high card. Our basic rooms are affordable but replete with cool amenities. Our big suites offer all the luxury you would expect from a high-end hotel. Our sensibility is democratic and inclusive. We appeal to a broad spectrum of travelers directly, without reducing everything to the lowest common denominator. Ace is built around collaborations and friendships with local designers, artists, and independent businesses.
We have been called a boutique hotel. We're not sure what that is. We just love doing things our own way, and creating a neat experience based on a sense of place.
HISTORY
Formerly the Breslin Hotel, the historic property that houses Ace Hotel New York has always been full of life. Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen were neighbors; "Diamond Jim" Brady (the inspiration for Marlon Brando's Guys & Dolls character) was a regular; visionary filmmaker, musicologist and painter Harry Smith lived there, too.
NEIGHBORHOOD
Built in 1904 as part of what would become an avenue of hotels, the property was situated in the Times Square of the turn of the century—an area full of clubs and restaurants, and New York's first neighborhood to be electrified with lighting and signage.
Currently, the newly-minted NoMad neighborhood, an historical district in Midtown immediately north of Madison Square Park and The Flatiron District, is undergoing a renaissance with a spate of neighborhood development. This area around Broadway is seeing an influx of new hotels, including Ace Hotel New York, the upscale NoMad Hotel at 28th and Broadway, and the Gansevoort Park nearby. Several significant residential and commercial developments are also underway with forward thinking projects like the Grey Group ad agency in the former Toy Center at 5th Ave. and Broadway, M127 at Madison and 30th, Sky House on 29th, fashion designer Isabel Toledo and her artist husband Ruben, and the Art Directors Club.
NoMad is a unique zone filled with history and outstanding architectural details in the very center of Manhattan with convenient access to both the Uptown and Downtown districts, the theater district, the East Side and West Side of town. Ace Hotel New York is a few blocks from Madison Square Garden, and right next to a Metro stop that will get you anywhere in the city.
DESIGN
We worked with New York firm Roman & Williams to design the hotel interiors. Their aesthetic mixes modern and vintage furnishings, objects, lighting and finishes from different eras to reflect a sense of unconventionality and freedom. The design is a little bohemian and a little sophisticated. While the lobby is layered and historical, the rooms are more efficient. A clothes rack Roman & Williams made from bent plumbing pipes with hanging steel boxes replaces a closet, and references the neighborhood’s fashion-world history. Pipes also appear in the bath accessories and desk legs, showing how stock materials can be re-appropriated to make something elegant but simple, unfussy and ultimately anti-design.
Music comes from either your iPod or a sleek Music Hall turntable. In some rooms, a full-size Smeg-brand refrigerator, with its streamlined, vintage profile, is stocked with real food, making the rooms feel more a friend’s cool apartment than a typical hotel room. Chalkboard paint on the walls and paintings by young artists individualize each room.
DINING AND EVENT SPACE
Ace Hotel is working with forward-thinking local businesses to make the building a hub of movement and culture. We brought in Stumptown Coffee Roasters and a restaurant from Ken and April of The Spotted Pig as a natural extension of the Ace style and way of life. Roman & Williams designed the cafe and restaurant as well.
There is also an event space called Liberty Hall where you can hold private parties, weddings, receptions, fashion shows, concerts, meetings, or dinners.
STUMPTOWN COFFEE ROASTERS
Stumptown Coffee Roasters, named Food & Wine Magazine’s Best Boutique Roaster, is an internationally recognized roastery founded in Portland, OR, with several cafés on the West Coast serving some of the best fresh coffee and espresso in the world. Their café at Ace Hotel NYC is their first on the East Coast. Obsessed with quality and fair trade, they insist on roasting their hand-selected coffee onsite. Stumptown believes in the social, environmental, and economic benefits of sustainable business practices, supporting coffee farms that are committed to the wellbeing of their workers, land, and water.
THE BRESLIN BAR AND DINING ROOM
Ken Friedman and April Bloomfield of The Spotted Pig and John Dory have created a gastropub called The Breslin Bar and Dining Room. The restaurant takes its inspiration from saloons, pubs, and bars – the casual eating establishments popular throughout the US and Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Hefty, detailed millwork, reclaimed wood flooring, a vintage mahogany bar, vintage back bar and tufted green leather upholstery work together to create a masculine, hearty feeling. The farm to table cuisine focuses on meat.
