Casa Cipriani New York – a ferry terminal turned ocean-liner hotel

At the southernmost point of Manhattan, where the East River slides into New York Harbor, Casa Cipriani New York occupies the Battery Maritime Building, the Beaux-Arts structure built from 1906 to 1909 and designed by the firm Walker and Morris, raised to serve ferries bound for Brooklyn. Ground level still does its old job: three ferry slips here handle excursion trips and services to Governors Island, plus commuter crossings to Port Liberté in Jersey City. Above the slips, the Cipriani family, the Venetian dynasty behind Harry's Bar, installed a 47-room hotel and private club that opened in August 2021, with interiors by Thierry Despont and rooms overlooking the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. The MICHELIN Guide awards it Three Keys. Few hotels anywhere let a guest watch a working ferry terminal from bed while the Statue of Liberty stands green on the harbour horizon.

01The house

Designed to serve ferries traveling to Brooklyn, the terminal used a variety of architectural metals and originally contained a large waiting area on the second floor, its façade finished in glass, steel, stamped zinc and copper reminiscent of the pavilions built for the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889. Although designated a New York City landmark in 1967 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, the building sat empty for decades, used in turn as a communal warehouse, a homeless shelter and a Coast Guard slip.

The New York City Economic Development Corporation hired Jan Hird Pokorny Architects, from 2000, to restore the street-facing façade and shore up the deteriorating wooden piers, before Cipriani S.A. and Midtown Equities took over the lease in 2017. Marvel Architects led the conversion, building a new two-storey glass addition on the south, water-facing elevation and working with structural engineer Silman to thread an entirely new steel superstructure through the historic shell, work that later earned a 2024 AIA New York State Design Award for Adaptive Reuse and Historic Preservation.

02Rooms and suites

The forty-seven uniquely decorated guestrooms and suites, designed by Thierry Despont, many with private terraces, look out over the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge or the Statue of Liberty. Custom mahogany furnishings, made in Italy, set an Old-World tone closer to an ocean liner than a tower block; two Presidential Suites are finished with Loro Piana interiors, and the largest apartments run to two, three and four bedrooms for guests travelling as a group.

Insider tip

Still a working Governors Island ferry dock; steps from Wall Street and the Battery

03Where to eat

The Restaurant is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, its dining room styled after the glamorous interior of a French ocean liner of the 1930s. The kitchen keeps faith with Harry's Bar classics: the original carpaccio, baked tagliolini with ham, calf's liver alla Veneziana, baby artichokes from the island of Torcello, and the famous vanilla meringue cake.

The Jazz Café, open Tuesday to Saturday under a gold-leaf ceiling and hand-painted lamps, recalls the warm atmosphere of a 1930s or '40s supper club, with a pianist and two alternating jazz bands providing dinner-time music. For something lighter, the Living Room serves freshly made pizzas, traditional Venetian soft sandwiches and a changing roster of desserts, while the all-day Pickering Room is named after Harry Pickering, the patron whose friendship with Giuseppe Cipriani led to the opening of Harry's Bar in Venice in 1931.

04The bar

Cocktails move between two rooms after dark: guests choose between the Pickering Room or the Promenade Bar, and the drink to order in either is the Bellini, invented at Harry's Bar in 1948 by Giuseppe Cipriani Sr, mixed here as it always has been, with white peach purée stirred into prosecco.

05Spa and wellbeing

The club's wellness floor sits above the hotel, its cast-iron columns and original ironwork left exposed around a glass-walled gym. Saunas are cedar, the steam rooms eucalyptus, and treatments range from signature massage to acupuncture and medical stress recovery, with cryotherapy and red-light therapy alongside a more traditional treatment lounge. Fitness access runs around the clock for hotel guests on a key card, though the spa itself keeps shorter, more civilised hours.

06The neighbourhood

The hotel sits on the water at the southern tip of Manhattan, steps from Wall Street and the Financial District, neighbouring the older charm of Downtown. Governors Island ferries still leave from the building's own slips, the Battery's harbour-front park is a short walk north, and Casa Cipriani occupies the only Exposition Universelle-style ferry building still operating anywhere in Manhattan, a working piece of nineteenth-century infrastructure for a front garden.

07Making the most of a stay

Casa Cipriani operates as a private members' club on the fifth floor as much as a hotel, so overnight guests inherit a club's address book along with their room key. The concierge arranges boat charters for scenic excursions along the Hudson River and New York harbour, private art and cultural tours, and tickets for theatre, concerts and sporting events, worth booking well ahead of a stay built as much around the view as the room.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.