#17 in Top 20 New York for Business · ★★★★★
The Whitby Hotel
Firmdale's midtown — bookable drawing rooms for off-the-record meetings.
Firmdale's midtown — bookable drawing rooms for off-the-record meetings.
"Firmdale's midtown — bookable drawing rooms for off-the-record meetings."
The Whitby Hotel is the Firmdale group's second New York property — opened in 2017 as the midtown counterpart to Crosby Street, two blocks south of the Plaza on West 56th Street. Eighty-six rooms only, designed by Kit Kemp in the same contemporary-British-eclectic mode as Crosby Street, but in a midtown working context. The asset is the Whitby's library — a 130-seat private screening room available for guest events, the most-distinctive meeting venue in any Manhattan hotel — plus the bookable Drawing Room and Reading Room on the lobby level. The Whitby Bar is the after-meeting room. The Whitby is the right pick for the business trip where the meeting is in midtown but the meeting style is creative-industries (advertising, publishing, broadcast, editorial) rather than law-firm or banking. It is also the right pick for the executive who does not want a corporate-hotel feel but needs midtown geography — Crosby Street is downtown (a 25-minute taxi from Park Avenue in afternoon traffic), the Whitby is one block from the Plaza and three blocks from St. Regis. The Firmdale service standard is, in editor view, the most-consistent of the design-boutique segment in Manhattan.
Whitby Suite (the flagship) or Loft Suite for the duplex layout.
Pre-book the Reading Room or Drawing Room for a 10am client meeting — the bookable public rooms are the Whitby's working asset. Whitby Bar at 5.30pm is the after-meeting space; the corner banquette is the editor's table.
The Whitby Hotel sits within our broader Top 20 Hotels in New York for Business list. It scored an aggregate 9.7/10 across the three editorial criteria — competitive against the field but, on business-specific factors, the angle above is what earned its rank. For the alternatives in the same New York neighbourhood, see Midtown West, 56th Street and adjacent. For a different city entirely, see the related lists below.
If you have already chosen the dates, our editor recommends booking the room twelve weeks ahead. The best suites with the right view orientation go first, and inventory for the popular months is quoted in months, not weeks. Suite-level rooms with private plunge pools or terraces — the ones that earn this rank — are typically the first to sell out.