The end of the year will see the much-anticipated opening of The Whitby Hotel. Located at West 56th Street at Fifth Avenue — close to the Museum of Modern Art and leading department stores such as Bergdorf Goodman — this will be the second New York property of the British company Firmdale Hotels. The group’s first U.S. venture, Crosby Street Hotel in SoHo, opened in 2009 and has since acquired a loyal following among Hideaway Report readers. The new hotel will have 86 rooms and suites, plus a restaurant, library, courtyard, orangery and cinema. The property will doubtless also display owner Kit Kemp’s vibrant and imaginative style of interior design.
The Alvear Palace Hotel in Buenos Aires has long been my favorite city hotel in South America. A Belle Epoque grande dame inaugurated in 1932, it is traditional, gracious and ideally located at the end of the Avenida Alvear in the elegant district of Recoleta. At the end of a tiring tour of Patagonia, or a spell in the Argentinian Andes, it has always been a refuge to which I have returned with a sigh of relief. My next visit promises to be even more enjoyable thanks to the addition of 15 new rooftop suites with floor-to-ceiling views, plus a new cocktail lounge, an indoor pool and a solarium.
Last year I spent a pleasant interlude at The Gainsborough Bath Spa, the first addition to the Bath’s roster of luxury hotels in living memory. Now competition has abruptly appeared in the form of No. 15 Great Pulteney, a 31-room property made up of three neoclassical 18th-century townhouses. Great Pulteney Street itself is arguably the grandest thoroughfare in the city — former residents include novelist Jane Austen — linking the eastern Bathwick district to the center of the city via the Robert Adam-designed Pulteney Bridge across the River Avon. The interior of the hotel is the work of Martin Hulbert, whose previous projects have included my recommended Barnsley House in the Cotswolds and the wonderful new treehouse suites at Chewton Glen, the perennial Harper favorite in Hampshire’s New Forest.
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