From a rooftop chicken coop to a luggage-storing robot, these hotels have more than your everyday offerings
Visitors to New York City certainly have their pick of hotel – throughout the city, options range from boutique guestrooms to luxurious penthouses. But how about something more unique? These hotels feature a quirky twist sure to capture visitors’ attention
In midtown Manhattan, the 197-room Refinery is set up in the 1912 Colony Arcade building, which served as a hat factory until the 1980s. The Refinery, a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, celebrates its connection to the Garment District with work-suspender-uniformed doormen to room desks designed to look like 1900s-era sewing machines.
The Roger, on Madison Avenue, also offers a connection to the past – literally. The hotel connects to the 19th century Baptist church next door through an underground catacomb. Design aesthetics pull from a past era, offering a tasteful take on a 1970s vibe.
To travel to another country (while staying in the city), the fashionable Nolita’s Crosby Street Hotel is an 86-room property with a modern British design approach. This includes sculptures of dogs and a giant human head art piece in the lobby, an English garden, and even a closed-to-the-public rooftop complete with a vegetable garden and chicken coop.
And for something truly out of this world, there’s Yotel in the Hell’s Kitchen neighboorhood. Yotel’s 170-square-foot “cabins” offer retractable queen-size beds enabled by the push of a button, purple-hued lighting and floor-to-ceiling glass windows. In the fourth-floor common area – called “Mission Control” – there is an outdoor patio, bar, and dining room area that was inspired by the design of sumo wrestling rings. The craziest part? A fully-automated “Yobot” inside a glass display that picks up and sorts guest luggage.
