Crosby Street Hotel Rating: 4.5 Pearls

SoHo, Manhattan, New York City

The Drawing Room

Tucked away on a quiet cobblestoned street one block from Broadway in the heart of SoHo, the 86-room, 11-story Crosby Street Hotel is the latest addition to lower Manhattan's increasingly crowded market of downtown boutiques. Opened in October 2009, the hotel was built on a prime piece of real estate that was previosuly a parking garage.

The Crosby Street is the first property outside of London for Firmdale Hotels, a small boutique chain that's privately owned by husband-and-wife team Tim and Kit Kemp. The hotel is beautiful, and manages to feel both sophisticated and accessible -- you can actually sit on the velvet tuxedo-style sofa in the "drawing room" without feeling like you're violating some kind of design etiquette. Kit Kemp serves as the design director, and she and her team clearly paid obsessive attention to color, texture, and detail: from the 10-foot-high Jaume Plensa sculpture in the lobby to the deep sofas in the drawing room to the textured wallpaper in the rooms. The overall effect is as whimsical as it is comfortable, a combination that's often absent from the monochrome glass-walled design hotels that have sprouted in the vicinity -- like the Cooper Square and the Thompson LES.

With standard rooms starting at 340 square feet, the Crosby's rooms are significantly more spacious than the 240-square-foot rooms at the nearby Mercer. They're also significantly more expensive. Both hotels have a 24-hour concierge, but what's nice about the service at the Mercer is that every person on staff doubles as a concierge, from the bellman to the front desk staff. The Crosby sure is pretty, though.

A welcome gift

• Check-in is at 2 p.m., not the standard 3 p.m.; checkout is at 11 a.m., not noon.
• 24-hour room service; 20 percent service charge automatically added to the bill
• 24-hour concierge
• Free copy of The New York Times delivered every morning (though mine didn't arrive)
• Nightly turndown service
• Free welcome gift delivered at check-in -- mine was a box of pencils
• Some of my service requests were answered quickly -- my toothpaste arrived within two minutes -- but others took some time.

View on a Larger Map

The Crosby Street Hotel is, naturally, located on Crosby Street, a quiet cobblestoned street one block east of Broadway in the heart of SoHo, one of New York's most vibrant fashion and dining districts. For those who want to be downtown, the location doesn't get much better than this. The MoMA design store and Balthazar, a renowned French restaurant and bakery, are both half a block away, and stores like 3.1 Phillip Lim, Marc Jacobs, and Anna Sui are within an easy stroll.

• Located in the heart of SoHo within walking distance of many of New York's best restaurants and shopping, as well as NYU, Chinatown, and the Lower East Side
• Within two blocks of seven subway lines
• 10- to 15-minute cab ride ($10 to $15) to Times Square, Central Park, and the theater district.
• From JFK International Airport, it's a one-hour, $45 flat-rate taxi ride to anywhere in Manhattan. From LaGuardia, it's about a 30-minute, $40 metered cab ride. Rides from Newark cost at least $40 (plus tolls), and can take more than 90 minutes.

The Superior Double Room

With a mix of new and vintage design pieces, textured fabrics, and bold splashes of color, these rooms are some of the most understated and beautiful (and expensive) in New York. Design director Kit Kemp clearly paid great attention to small details that make a difference: good lighting, heated towel racks, fine Frette linens, even a lavender sachet in the closet. The standard Superior Rooms are all on the 2nd floor and start at 340 square feet, making them almost one-third larger than rooms at the nearby Mercer. Every room category up from superior gets a bit more space and a better view. One gripe: Bathtubs aren't standard in the bottom three room categories (only deluxe courtyard and above), and there are no alarm clocks.

• Rooms start at 340 square feet, and no two are designed exactly alike.
• Spacious, well-lit bathrooms with his-and-her Lefroy Brooks sinks, heated towel racks and cotton Frette towels. Custom toiletries from Miller Harris in London
• Supremely comfortable beds with crisp 400-thread-count Frette linens, down pillows, and duvets
• Great attention to detail: soft lighting, plenty of outlets, satin-covered clothes hangers, a lavender sachet in the closet
• Tech amenities include Bose iPod dock, Tivoli radio, 32-inch Sharp flat-screen TV, and BluRay DVD player.
• No alarm clock
• Two soft, thick cotton robes in the bathroom and slippers in the closet
• Minibar with Dean & Deluca snacks from $3 to $7 (they're free at the Mercer), sodas $4, half bottle of Krug $125

The Sculpture Garden

With plenty of indoor and outdoor seating areas, a well-equipped but small gym (or free passes to Equinox), a 99-seat screening room, and even a rooftop vegetable garden, the Crosby Street has the basics more than covered. By comparison, neither the Greenwich nor the Mercer has a screening room, but the Greenwich does have an underground pool. Both the Greenwich and the Mercer have more acclaimed restaurants: chef Andrew Carmellini's Locanda Verde (at the Greenwich) and Jean-Georges Vongerichten's The Mercer Kitchen (at the Mercer).

• Well-equipped but small fitness center with two treadmills, an elliptical machine, a rowing machine, an upright bike, a recumbent bike, and a stair climber, plus an assortent of weights and medicine balls
• Screening room with 99 luxurious Poltrona Frau leather seats and wool-lined walls
• Rooftop vegetable garden
• No business center, but guests can borrow Mac laptops from the front desk
• Outdoor seating area called the "sculpture garden" with a petrified tree sculpture, garden with native plantings, and a high cedar-planked wall for privacy
• Free Wi-Fi

The Crosby Street Hotel was the first Empire State hotel to hear a LEED gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The building itself completed constructed in 2009, so the designers and were able to incorporate some ambitious eco-friendly features such as a "green" roof (for growing some of the restaurant's fruits and vegetables). There are low-flow faucets and toilets throughout the building, and the hotel offsets at least 35 percent of its electricity.

Although its upscale downtown vibe isn't exactly geared towards kids, some of the rooms, especially the deluxe courtyard suite with a king bed and a queen-size pullout couch, are good for families. I met one family from Nashville, with four kids between ages eight and 15, who said they specifically chose the Crosby Street because it had spacious rooms that connected. However, the hotel is located in SoHo, an area known for its shopping and restaurants, and not for kid-friendly attractions.

• Cribs and rollaway beds are free.
• Rollaways do not fit in the standard Superior Rooms or Luxury Rooms -- only deluxe rooms and above.
• Connecting rooms are available.
• No set children's menus, though the hotel can arrange a custom menu on request

The Crosby Bar

SoHo needed a spot like The Crosby Bar -- it's a large space, but still manages to feel cozy and warm with floor-to-ceiling warehouse-style windows, banquettes, and a long pewter bar. The restaurant is open for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and afternoon tea, and the executive chef is Robin Read, who oversees food operations across all of Firmdale's hotels. His menu isn't especially adventurous -- continental American with some English favorites mixed in -- but the food's good, and prices are fair for the neighborhood. Annoyingly, the restaurant was so packed the night of my stay that the only place for me to sit was at the bar. Even when I said I was a guest of the hotel, they couldn't squeeze me in, so I ended up ordering the fish and chips with pea puree ($21) through room service.

• The setting is superb -- floor-to-ceiling warehouse-style windows, cozy chairs, and warm colors. Open from 7 a.m. until 12:30 a.m.
• Service can be sluggish, but the staff is friendly.
• Excellent breakfast -- prices range from $9 (granola) to $19 (bagel with smoked salmon); larger prix fixe breakfasts between $19 and $31
• Bar menu ranges from $8 (sliders) to $21(cheese plate with sourdough)
• Dinner mains range between $14 (sheep's milk cheese panini with roasted vegetables) and $38 (sirloin steak with French fries and Béarnaise).
• Cocktails are creative and delicious -- but cost a staggering $18 to $20.