The Cooper Square Hotel — Hotel Review Rating: 4.0 Pearls

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Oyster Hotel Review

Reporter: Sara B.
Updated: September 29, 2009

 Scene

The Cooper Square Hotel opened in December 2008 after four years of construction, setbacks, and ongoing controversy and vocal opposition from its East Village neighbors. Critics have dubbed the building the "neighborhood lightning rod," and New York magazine called it a "billowing white glass spire ... simultaneously arresting and comically out of place." But this is all par for the course when a $110 million, 21-story glass tower -- designed by Carlos Zapata (also of Soldier Field fame) -- sprouts up along the Bowery, among tenement buildings that date back to the 1850s. Overall, the design looks more Dubai than downtown New York.

Bent on defying convention -- often at the cost of convenience -- there is no signage on the lobby bathroom doors, and there is no reception desk. Upon check-in, a "receptionist" ushers guests into the library, where they can sip drinks and read free copies of the New York Times, Le Figaro, and Le Monde while lounging on plush B&B Italia couches and Eames Eames chairs until someone comes to show them to their rooms.

Still, the interiors are warm and comfortable -- they're designed by Milan-based Antonio Citterio, who also designed the Bulgari Resorts in Milan, Bali, Tokyo, and B&B Italia's headquarters. Thousands of books -- all of which are for sale -- are placed throughout the individual rooms and library. (Book-sale proceeds go toward homeless and low-income outreach programs and AIDS prevention, through the nonprofit Housing Works Bookstore Cafe.)

Unlike the runway-style techno at many other boutique hotels, the music is more low-key hip, from bands like Radiohead, Belle & Sebastian, and The New Pornographers. But the music might be a smidge too loud for some guests, and the Table 8 bar scene feels especially twentysomething. For the same East Village grit and style, but with a crowd that's a bit more mature, check out the Bowery Hotel, only two blocks south.

 Service

There's no check-in desk at the Cooper Square. Instead, guests are taken into the "library" -- with its B&B Italia couches and a wood-burning fireplace -- by bellmen in dapper green cardigans. There they're seated and delivered free drinks while they wait for a staff member to appear and handle any paperwork. In theory it's a nice idea, but in practice it's an inefficient way to juggle guests, and it means you might have to wait a little longer to get to your room.

In my case, I waited a lot longer. Check-in is at 3 p.m. I arrived at 2:50 p.m. and was told that my room still needed to be cleaned. After waiting an hour with another couple of guests stuck waiting to check in to their rooms as well -- during which time no staff member came by to check on me -- I flagged someone down to ask about the holdup. Turns out it was a communication issue -- the room was ready all along. Other guests, like this reviewer, also got stuck waiting, in this instance until as late as 5 p.m.

However, all of the staff I encountered were prompt -- room service (served 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.) and towel requests got to my door in minutes -- and some staff members even made efforts to remember guests by name.

Just as there's no check-in desk, there's also no designated concierge desk. Instead, the concierge roams freely throughout the library (lobby), asking guests if they need any assistance. The person who helped me was young, but was able to recommend Great Jones Cafe, a really good burger spot with a divey feel, and Double Crown, a pricey but very good upscale comfort-food spot, both just a few blocks away.

The hotel offers a nightly turndown service, complete with a plum on your bedside table.

 Location

Cooper Square, the actual square on which the hotel sits, is located in a neighborhood historically known for cultivating artsy, edgy intellectuals, partially thanks to Cooper Union, one of the nation's premier art, architecture, and engineering schools (full-tuition scholarship for all students), whose striking new academic building is located half a block from the hotel.

Cooper Square forms the northernmost edge of the Bowery, a milelong avenue in Lower Manhattan that was for much of the last century associated with the down-and-out: the homeless, the drug addicts, and the punk rockers who often fell into those categories as well. But these days the Bowery looks more like SoHo than Skid Row. A Think coffee shop, trendy clothing boutiques, and hip eateries like the newly opened DBGB, the latest endeavor from renowned French chef Daniel Boulud, now dot this once-desolate street.

Happily, the area still has some character, edge, and grit -- there is in fact a homeless shelter next door to the Bowery Hotel -- but thanks to the active foot traffic, it feels safe even late at night. In fact, it's the juxtaposition of the old and the new, the modern and the gritty, that makes the neighborhood what it is today, even if the Village Voice offices across the street continue to downsize, and even though purists still mourn the closure of CBGB's, the temple of punk that used to be a few blocks down the street. (There's now a John Varvatos store in its place.)

Located on the edge of the East Village, and just two blocks north of the Bowery, it's within easy walking distance of the Lower East Side, SoHo, and Union Square] -- an ideal base, in other words, for exploring Manhattan's vibrant downtown nightlife scene. It's also just a 10-minute walk to NYU (though there are actually some NYU faculty and academic offices across the street from the hotel).

The one downside to the hotel's location is that it's in a bit of a no man's land subway-wise. The 6, R, and W lines are closest to the hotel (within a few minutes' walking distance), but there are far more options if you walk 10 minutes north to Union Square, where you can catch an additional five lines, or 10 minutes south to Houston Street, where you can catch an additional four lines.

The hotel provides valet parking for $45 per day.

 Rooms

No two rooms are created equal in this super-sleek obelisk-shaped glass building. The 145 room have 50 different floor plans, which are organized into five categories, one through five, and are all a fair amount larger -- and immensely brighter -- than the average New York hotel room. Designed with modern, custom-made B&B Italia furniture, the rooms look modern -- and have not-so-intuitive lighting and faucet systems -- but they're pleasantly warm and comfortable.

Ranging from 250 square feet to 350 square feet, all rooms have either a queen- or king-size bed, and the price depends on the room size and its view, which can range from an interior courtyard view in the Cooper 1s on Floors 3 to 6 to the Cooper 5 Corners, which have two full glass windows and incredible views of the city above the ninth floor. There are also studios and suites that range between 450 and 625 square feet, all with unobstructed views.

Amenities include a 37-inch Sony Bravia flat-screen TV with hundreds of channels and movies on demand, a Sony iPod docking station with legitimately awesome sound, a Lexon cube alarm clock, and a Philips cordless phone.

The bed -- a pillow-top mattress topped with a two-inch featherbed, a down duvet, and 400-thread-count Egyptian cotton Sferra linens -- is incredibly comfortable, though some might argue that all the padding on top of additional padding makes them a little too soft.

Bathrooms in a Cooper 4 room are large by most New York standards, and have separate tubs and showers (the lower-tier rooms are smaller, and only have a shower). But like so much else in the room, the bathrooms are beautiful but not very practical. Tubs are barely big enough for one slender person, and though the black sinks and vanities are sleek, they're shallow and show every single splatter of toothpaste. The bathrooms are also very dark: Despite a huge window in mine and a sleek light fixture, it was hard to illuminate the entire bathroom, and putting on makeup can be especially tricky.

Toiletries are from Red Flower, a boutique based in SoHo that created a custom scent for the hotel called Wanderlust. Curbed received a press release describing the scent as "water, steel, violet, white woods, and resin," which, um, isn't all that helpful.

Minibars are hooked up with an unconventional collection of, among other items, Hendrick's gin, 10 Cane rum, and Boylan's sodas. But it only gets weirder -- there's also a can of Oxia "personal oxygen," vitamin powder from fitness guru David Kirsch, and a travel kit of Loraine makeup.

 Features

There is no gym, but Cooper Square bests the nearby Bowery Hotel's small, dark, on-site gym by providing free passes to the New York Health & Racquet Club, only 535 feet away. The gym is one of the best chains in Manhattan, and offers everything from spin classes to personal trainers, massage therapy, nutrition counseling, and a two-story bouldering wall. Hours are 5:30 a.m. to midnight Monday through Friday, and 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends.

The hotel is filled with more than 6,000 books on topics ranging from food to design to erotica to classic literature. All of them are for sale, and all of the proceeds go towards New York City Housing Works, a nonprofit dedicated to ending AIDS and homelessness.

In addition to its books, the hotel is helping to keep print media alive -- a free copy of the New York Times is left outside every guest's door in the morning.

The Wi-Fi is fast, reliable, and free. And there's a Sony laptop that the computerless can borrow for free.

In the future -- at some unspecified time -- the hotel also plans to open a screening room -- a surefire way to bring in a few celebrities, as demonstrated by the Bryant Park Hotel.

 Pets

No deposit is required to bring a pet, just a signature on a waiver guaranteeing that your dog won't poop on the B&B Italia furniture, et cetera. If he does, off to a kennel he goes. Canines must be on a leash at all times in the hotel's public spaces, and no pets are allowed in the restaurant. Also, be sure to give the hotel a heads-up if you're bringing your dog so they can hook you up with a bed, a bowl, and some "freshly prepared food by our chef," according to hotel literature. Sample menus include chicken, brown rice, and corn, or liver, broccoli, potato, and bacon -- but no golden spoons.

 Family

This hotel doesn't exactly exude a "bring the kids" kind of feel, and I didn't see any little ones during my stay. Cribs and rollaway beds are free, but the latter only fit into suites (there are no adjoining rooms). Table 8's menu is decidedly geared towards adults, but the smaller room-service menu has a few kid-friendly items, if you're willing to pay $15 for French toast or $17 for a burger and fries.

The Loews Regency and Affinia Fifty are all better situated near kid-friendly attractions uptown.

 Cleanliness

The hotel is brand-new and looks every bit the part. My room was spotless, though the makings of some slight wear and tear were already apparent on the pale green carpet. Otherwise, you could eat off the floor.

 Food

Table 8 opened its doors in May 2009, five months after the hotel itself. Though well hyped, the esteemed New York magazine food critic Adam Platt gave it one star out of five, or "half a star for the building and the promising chef, and another half for the desserts."

Chef Govind Armstrong is behind the project, which also has outposts in Los Angeles and at the Z Ocean Hotel in South Beach, where I've also eaten. Both meals shared one thing in common: salt. Way too much of it. It's so salty there's a "salt bar" on the menu, which means their small plates like fluke, rabbit sausage, and scallops are, as Platt writes, "aggressively oversprinkled with arcane varieties of salt." A guest sitting next to me complained of what appeared to be an "inch of salt crust on my porterhouse steak."

Small plates from the salt bar range between $3 and $5, apps between $8 and $12, and entrees between $14 and $29. I had the skate with steamed cockles in a spicy saffron broth ($19) and my friend had the grilled baby chicken with short rib hash ($22). The fish was good, but encrusted in some kind of salty breadcrumb concoction that left me in urgent need of several rounds of water refills. The chicken was good, the short rib hash less so. The dessert was the highlight for me, especially the panna cotta.

Regardless, if the crowds are a testament to the current buzz about this place, then this place is hot -- it was packed shoulder-to-shoulder on a Thursday night from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., and loud. So loud I left the restaurant hoarse after the hour-plus shoutfest with my friend sitting 3 inches away from me.

Room service is available from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., though technically breakfast, which is ordinarily served in the restaurant downstairs from 6:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. (and not included in the room rate), can be delivered to your room. It's decidedly less salty with generous portions, especially in the berry department, which seems an obvious place to skimp. The juice is fresh-squeezed and the coffee comes in a French press. (Contrary to some TripAdvisor reviews, there's no longer a free continental breakfast -- that deal was only good before the hotel's restaurant opened. Continental breakfasts now run $16 per person.)

 Drinks

The hotel has two bars, one on the ground floor and another on the second floor with a really nice patio that closes at 8 p.m., no exceptions. (The place is abhorred by the hotel's residential neighbors.)

The downstairs bar was packed when I showed up on a Thursday night -- packed as in shoulder-to-shoulder and foggy windows from too many people crammed in there. It's a fine place for people-watching, provided you get the right vantage point. Their specialty cocktail is the Basil 8, with vodka, muddled grapes, basil, simple syrup, lime juice, and ginger ale, but I wasn't actually able to get my hands on one because the crowd was so thick around the bar. But let us know if you've sampled one of these; they sound delicious.

 Bottom Line

Opened in December 2008, the designers spared no expense when constructing this freshly hyped and controversial 21-story glass tower among the humble tenements of the East Village. Spacious rooms, all with floor-to-ceiling windows, plus a trendy restaurant, means stiff competition for the well-established Bowery Hotel nearby.