The Best Luxury Hotels in New York City
New York's grand hotels have spent over a century hosting the moments that define the city's mythology — a mural painted in lieu of rent, a Fifth Avenue tower once crowned by a gold rooster, and a lobby that gave F. Scott Fitzgerald a setting for the Jazz Age itself.
The Plaza
Opened on 1 October 1907 after McKim, Mead & White designed its interiors at a cost of $12.5 million, The Plaza has spent well over a century as the city's most mythologized address. F. Scott Fitzgerald set pivotal scenes of The Great Gatsby here in the 1920s, the Beatles stayed six days in February 1964, and the children's character Eloise was born within its walls in 1955. Designated a New York City Landmark in 1969 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, the hotel reopened in 2008 after a $450 million restoration.
The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel
On the Upper East Side, the Carlyle's fame rests substantially on Bemelmans Bar, painted in 1947 by Ludwig Bemelmans, author and illustrator of the Madeline children's books. Rather than a fee, Bemelmans negotiated a year and a half of accommodation at the hotel for himself and his family in exchange for the murals — whimsical scenes of Madeline and her classmates across four seasons, with an ice-skating elephant and cigar-smoking rabbits, that remain the only Bemelmans artwork still on public display anywhere.
Aman New York
Housed in the 1921 Crown Building at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, originally designed by Warren & Wetmore — the firm behind Grand Central Terminal — for businessman August Heckscher, the building once wore a 12-foot gold-plated rooster weathervane, melted down for the war effort in 1942, and later housed the Museum of Modern Art's first home in 1929. After a restoration beginning in 2017 led by architect Jean-Michel Gathy, Aman New York opened to guests in August 2022 with just 83 suites above the seventh floor, alongside 22 residences at the building's pinnacle.
The St. Regis New York
Opened by John Jacob Astor IV on Fifth Avenue in 1904, the St. Regis holds the King Cole Bar, home since 1932 to Maxfield Parrish's 1906 mural Old King Cole and His Fiddlers Three, originally painted for Astor's Knickerbocker Hotel. The bar also claims the birthplace of the Bloody Mary in New York, where bartender Fernand Petiot introduced his Paris-born vodka-tomato cocktail in 1934, refining it into the version still associated with the hotel today.
Choosing Where to Stay
The Plaza and St. Regis anchor Fifth Avenue and Midtown sightseeing; the Carlyle offers the quieter, more residential register of the Upper East Side, detailed in our areas guide; and Aman trades a larger footprint for the most private, spa-focused stay among the city's grand hotels. For dining recommendations near any of these addresses, see our Michelin-starred restaurants guide.
