The Fifth Avenue Hotel – a Gilded Age bank reborn in NoMad

On the corner of Fifth Avenue and West 28th Street, in the quarter New Yorkers call NoMad, The Fifth Avenue Hotel rises from a limestone and brick palazzo that has stood on this corner since the bank era of the early twentieth century, now extended by a 24-storey glass tower. The hotel occupies the site of the Gilded Age mansion of society hostess Charlotte Goodridge, later rebuilt by McKim, Mead & White as the Second National Bank, and reopened as a hotel in 2023 after a ten-year restoration led by Flâneur Hospitality and its founder Alex Ohebshalom. Designer Martin Brudnizki took the mansion's gilded public rooms as his cue for 149 bedrooms and suites in saturated colour and pattern. The MICHELIN Guide awards the house Two MICHELIN Keys, and its restaurant, Café Carmellini, carries the MICHELIN Plate distinction — a address where banking history, decorative excess and a James Beard-winning kitchen now share the same marble floors.

01The house

The address has worn several lives. A mansion belonging to the formidable hostess Charlotte Goodridge stood here from 1856, and its memory is still invoked at the hotel as the property's first notable resident. The mansion was demolished in 1907, when McKim, Mead & White — the firm behind the original Pennsylvania Station — built a five-storey Italian Renaissance palazzo for the Second National Bank, with further additions by the same architects in 1913 and 1928. The Ohebshalom family, which acquired the building, has owned it since the 1970s.

A fourth and final addition came with the hotel project itself: a 230-foot glass tower designed by Perkins Eastman and PBDW Architects, built onto the historic structure as what the developers call the final chapter of a century-long history. The result is an openly hybrid building — the original brick-and-limestone bank joined to a shimmering modern tower — restored over ten years by Flâneur Hospitality before opening its doors in 2023.

02Rooms and suites

Interior designer Martin Brudnizki took his cue from the Gilded Age public rooms of the mansion, dressing the 149 rooms and suites in richly patterned fabrics, hand-painted murals and brass fittings rather than the pared-back minimalism more usual in Manhattan hotels. Categories range from the NoMad Twin — 290 square feet with two Duxiana beds, Italian linens and a marble walk-in shower — up through the NoMad King, City King and Grand King rooms to suites with wraparound views of Midtown.

Insider tip

Two blocks from Madison Square Park and the Flatiron Building; walkable to the Empire State Building.

At the top sits the Flâneur Penthouse, which spans the entire seventh floor as a two-bedroom residence with a 900-square-foot terrace tracing the building's historic façade. The 21 Mansion Suites occupy the historic building itself, each kept with fresh flowers, a stocked Maxi Bar and round-the-clock butler service; the whole wing, mansion and penthouse together, can be booked as a private three-night buyout for up to 42 guests. Every room comes with a personal tablet for lighting and streaming, a Nespresso machine, Dyson hairdryer and a Maxibar restocked daily, alongside butler service, a house car and twice-daily housekeeping.

03Where to eat

Café Carmellini is the signature restaurant of James Beard Award-winning chef Andrew Carmellini, who distils a 30-year New York career into a menu that marries Italian and French cooking with a classic New York sensibility. The room matches the ambition: the landmark building's neoclassical architecture reimagined by Brudnizki in a maximalist style, with an open kitchen, an intimate bar and balconies for tête-à-tête dining over the action below. The restaurant opened under its own name in November 2023 and is rated with the MICHELIN Plate distinction.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner are served daily, with the kitchen open to hotel guests and outside visitors alike — reservations are recommended for dinner, when the dining room's chandeliers and indoor trees are at their most theatrical.

04The bar

The Portrait Bar takes its name from the eclectic, era-spanning collection of artwork on its wood-panelled walls — an intimate drawing room just off the lobby, built around a carved stone fireplace. By day it serves as the guest lounge, with coffee, tea and pastries available to hotel guests from 8am to 5pm; by night it turns to handcrafted cocktails and bar snacks, in keeping with the hotel's description of it as the room where New York stories begin.

05Wellbeing

This is not a hotel built around a spa floor or a lap pool. The Fifth Avenue Hotel instead offers a 24-hour on-site fitness center as standard across every room category, alongside the softer rituals of the house — a stocked Maxi Bar, overnight shoeshine, unlimited or three-piece garment pressing depending on room type, and the kind of butler service that answers by text rather than bell.

06The neighbourhood

NoMad — North of Madison Square Park — has been at the centre of the city's social and cultural map since the Gilded Age, and the hotel sits two blocks from the park itself and the Flatiron Building, within easy reach of the Empire State Building, Fifth Avenue shopping, Eataly and Koreatown. The district was home to the world's first modern art exhibition, held in 1913 at the 69th Regiment Armory on 25th Street, and has since grown into one of the world's preeminent design districts, thick with galleries, furniture showrooms and the kind of MICHELIN-recognised restaurants that now count Café Carmellini among their number.

07Making the most of a stay

Book a Mansion Suite for the sunken marble tub and heated floor of its spa-inspired bathroom, or the One Bedroom Terrace Suite for its own expansive outdoor space above the rooftops of Midtown. Time an evening for The Portrait Bar before a Café Carmellini dinner reservation, and use the house car — available daily from 8am to 3pm, subject to availability — to cover the short hop to the Flatiron District or Chelsea galleries rather than hailing a cab on Fifth Avenue itself.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.