The Twenty Two New York – a Gilded Age ladies' hotel, reborn

At 16 East 16th Street, two minutes from Union Square Park, The Twenty Two New York occupies a building with a serious back-story. The Margaret Louisa Home was built in 1891 as lodging for single, salaried women newly arrived in the city, commissioned and fully financed by the Vanderbilt heiress Margaret Louisa Shepard and designed by the architect Robert Henderson Robertson to house up to 100 residents. More than a century on, the building has reopened as the first address outside London for the Mayfair hotel, restaurant and private members' club of the same name, developed with New York real-estate partner Michael Chetrit. Behind the landmarked façade sit 76 rooms, including 19 suites, the Levantine restaurant Café Zaffri on the ground floor, and a private members' floor above, mixing residents and locals by design. The MICHELIN Guide awards it One Key.

01The house

The Margaret Louisa Home opened its doors in 1891, six storeys built to Robert Henderson Robertson's designs, with bedrooms, parlour and reception rooms, private dining areas and laundry facilities for more than 100 women who lived there while finding their feet in the city. A 1989 Landmarks Preservation Commission report noted that Robertson's original drawings had called for a complete seventh storey under a peaked roof, a flourish prohibited at the time under regulations governing lodging houses.

Decades later the same Commission approved a nine-storey hotel within the shell. Full demolition permits were filed for a project that preserved only the historic façade, by the developer's own account under architects BKSK, who added new storeys above the 1891 stonework while recreating period detail at street level. The result, reported soon after the building opened, makes the modern addition seem to hover above the original brownstone rather than compete with it.

The Twenty Two's London founders, Navid Mirtorabi and Jamie Reuben, led the project with Chetrit, and the interiors throughout were designed by Alexy Kos and Che Huang of Child Studio, who drew on archival documents of the house and reworked American vernacular references — Shaker, Mission and Craftsman — into a scheme the designers describe as cinematic rather than literal.

02Rooms and suites

Of the hotel's 76 keys, 19 are suites, arranged across room categories named Nook, Classic, Superior and Deluxe, and suite categories running from the Atrium Studio and Junior Suite up to the One Bedroom Suite and the penthouse Twenty Two Suite. Rooms throughout carry Rivolta Carmignani linens and Italian Calacatta marble bathrooms, fitted with Dyson hairdryers and organic bath products.

Insider tip

Book Café Zaffri ahead; check-in from 3pm, check-out by noon.

The Twenty Two Suite, at roughly 95 square metres, is the showstopper: a penthouse apartment built beneath a reinstated gable roof, with a muralled, vaulted ceiling over the sitting area, two bedrooms, two marble bathrooms and a powder room, plus a fully stocked bar. One review of the design noted the suite's creation was one of the most complex parts of the whole restoration, since the team set a period-appropriate roof atop the building using the architect's own 19th-century drawings as a guide.

03Where to eat

Café Zaffri occupies the ground floor and is open to the public, the third collaboration from sisters Jennifer and Nicole Vitagliano, who also run the MICHELIN-starred Musket Room and the all-day café Raf's. Executive chef Mary Attea built the menu around her Lebanese heritage, working alongside executive pastry chef Camari Mick, both fresh off a Food & Wine Best New Chefs award when the restaurant opened in February 2025.

The kitchen's signatures lean on childhood memory: a lamb tartare reworked from the raw kibbeh nayeh her father used to make, and a chicken liver mousse finished with arak instead of the usual brandy, for a note of anise sweetness. A skewer service lets diners choose two of six options — among them octopus with harissa and veal sweetbreads — while mains run to a grilled whole dorade and a lamb Wellington wrapped with grape leaves and labneh, a dish Attea describes as paying homage to both Lebanon and the London hotel that gave the restaurant its home.

Mick's desserts carry the same vocabulary into pastry: a sweet mezze for two pairing five cookies with six frozen treats, a knafeh cheesecake, and a baklava mille-feuille. Beverage director Kimberly Cavoores keeps the theme going at the bar with cocktails built around orange blossom, cardamom and arak, Lebanon's national spirit. Lunch runs daily from 11.30am to 3.30pm and dinner from 5pm to midnight.

04The members' club and bar

Above the restaurant, a private members' floor gives the hotel its second identity. As a club, the Twenty Two sets out to mix locals with travelers, with its social calendar given as much weight as its rooms; overnight guests are automatically treated as temporary members for the length of their stay, with access to the Living Room and its bar.

Design carries the same Gilded Age references found downstairs into the club spaces — archways discovered in archival photographs of the original YWCA home, deep jewel-toned textiles and leopard-print carpet that nod to the hotel's sister club on Grosvenor Square in Mayfair, which opened in 2022 within its own Edwardian manor. Children are welcome in the Living Room until 5pm, after which the club reverts to guests of 21 and over.

05Wellbeing

A compact gym, fitted out with Technogym equipment, is open around the clock for hotel guests. The building's historic footprint left no room for a full spa or pool, so the hotel instead arranges personal training through S10 Training, a studio a short walk away in the West Village, for guests who want a more tailored session.

06The neighbourhood

Union Square Park is close enough to reach on foot in under two minutes, its Greenmarket running on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays with produce from farms across the region — a market Café Zaffri's kitchen draws on directly. From the hotel's door, Broadway leads north toward Daniel Burnham's Flatiron Building, while a ten-minute walk south along Fifth Avenue reaches the Washington Square Arch and the shopfronts of Greenwich Village.

07Making the most of a stay

Check-in is from 3pm and check-out by noon; guests arriving early or wanting to linger should flag it with the front desk in advance, since later departures are charged by the half or full night depending on timing. Dogs can be accommodated on request, subject to a cleaning fee. Book Café Zaffri ahead rather than arriving without a reservation — fashion-week weeks in particular fill the dining room fast — and ask at check-in about temporary access to the members' Living Room, the quietest place in the building for a coffee away from the street.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.