John Jacob Astor IV opened the St. Regis in 1904 to give New York a hotel worthy of the city's ambitions. He succeeded. More than a century later, the Beaux-Arts building on Fifth Avenue and 55th Street remains one of the most consequential hotel addresses in the world — not through renovation or reinvention, but through the stubborn persistence of doing the same things extremely well for a very long time.
The centrepiece is the St. Regis Butler Service. Each guest is assigned a personal butler available around the clock — for wardrobe pressing, personalised cocktail preparation in the room, morning newspaper preparation, or the particular requests that arrive only at 2am. It is, by some distance, the most consistently executed personal service in Manhattan. The staff have been doing this longer than the competition has existed.
The rooms continue in the tradition: Italian marble bathrooms, silk drapery, hand-carved millwork, and the kind of deep-pile carpet underfoot that registers as a sensory statement before anything else does. The two-bedroom suites, at 1,500-1,700 square feet with separate marble hallways and private butler pantries, are among the finest hotel real estate in the city.
The King Cole Bar deserves its own sentence. Maxfield Parrish's mural has presided over the room since 1906, and the Bloody Mary was invented here in the 1930s. Whatever your feelings about hotel bars, this one is non-negotiable. Its location — accessed from the lobby on 55th Street — makes it a city institution independent of the hotel.
The combination of Midtown location, butler service, and rooms large enough to conduct a meaningful conversation makes the St. Regis the standard business hotel for those who conduct business at a certain level. The lobby works as a meeting point, the King Cole Bar as a venue for any evening encounter, and the butler handles whatever the office forgot to arrange before departure. Fifth Avenue and 55th is fifteen minutes from anywhere that matters and a reasonable walk to none of the wrong places.
Rates from $652/night. Butler service included.
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