The New York Edition NEW YORK
Ian Schrager has looked to the past and the future in his latest collaboration with Marriott International, a reinvention of Manhattan’s iconic Clocktower building, designed by Ian Schrager Design Studio with Rockwell Group. Words: Matt Turner | Photography: © Nikolas Koenig
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t seems appropriate that Ian Schrager has taken on New York’s iconic Clocktower for conversion to his latest Edition hotel, since he has looked both to the past and the future in an attempt to create what he describes as “a timeless classic”. Formerly home to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, this was the tallest building in New York on its completion in 1909. The strong-shouldered limestone architecture, by Napoleon LeBrun & Sons, was inspired by the Campanile in Venice. Its location in Manhattan’s NoMad district is one Schrager hopes will hit a sweet spot between uptown and downtown. Those eight metre clockfaces on each side of the tower point northwards towards Times Square and Central Park; West to the Meatpacking District and Chelsea, South to Soho and Tribeca, and East, to Brooklyn across the water. Edition sits somewhere in between these districts – both geographically, in its physical location, and metaphorically, in terms of its positioning in the hotel market. “With forces pushing from every direction, this area is fast becoming the new centre of town,” says Schrager.
As with previous Edition Hotels in London and Miami, the project is a collaboration between Ian Schrager Company and Marriott International, with initial finance from Marriott funding its development before being sold to Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. But where Schrager worked with Yabu Pushelberg on the London and Miami Editions, for New York he turned to Rockwell Group to collaborate with his team on the interiors. With their head office located just a few blocks south in Union Square, it was a logical choice of design firm for a project that required careful handling of a New York landmark. “The lower floors, which were originally the Met Life executive’s offices, were largely in disarray after a century of renovations and minor upgrades,” explains David Rockwell. The design team have looked to late 19th century New York – specifically the private members clubs of the era, the mansions of Fifth Avenue’s Gilded Age, and the works of Beaux-Arts architect Stanford White – to evoke what is described as “a new age of American Glamour with an understated aesthetic of the turn of the 20th century.
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