W New York – Union Square – the brand's birthplace, reborn

At the corner of Park Avenue South and East 17th Street, a rooftop sign that once spelled GUARDIAN LIFE now reads W UNION SQUARE, lit above a 21-storey Beaux-Arts tower raised in 1911 by architects Albert D'Oench and Joseph W. Yost for the Germania Life Insurance Company, renamed Guardian Life during the First World War. Guardian Life moved out in 1999, and W Hotels opened here the following year. Marriott International later bought the building outright for 206 million dollars and, in 2025, completed a 100 million dollar, room-to-rooftop renovation with Rockwell Group, the same New York studio that designed the hotel's original 2001 interiors. The result, with a new seafood brasserie and the neighbourhood's only rooftop bar, has just earned the hotel its first MICHELIN Key.

01The house

The tower belongs to the city's history books before it belonged to W. Albert D'Oench and Joseph W. Yost designed the 21-storey Beaux-Arts headquarters for the Germania Life Insurance Company, completed in 1911. When war with Germany made the name a liability, the company was renamed the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America in 1917 and the building followed suit. Guardian Life moved out in 1999, the W opened the following year, and the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001, having already been made a New York City landmark in 1988. Theodore Dreiser kept an office here in 1925 while finishing An American Tragedy. The Guardian Life name, it's said, was chosen partly because its letters could be recycled from the building's costly illuminated roof sign.

Upstairs, the insurance company's old second-floor hall survives almost intact: a marble-floored elevator lobby carried on arches beneath five domes, standing beside the grand room once used for selling policies. That hall, lined in marble and still bearing Guardian Life's monogram in its plasterwork, is now the hotel's ballroom-sized Living Room. Marriott International has owned and run the hotel outright since buying the building in October 2019 for 206 million dollars, and in 2025 handed its reinvention to Rockwell Group, the same firm that designed the hotel's original 2001 interiors.

02Rooms and suites

All 256 rooms were rebuilt in the renovation, redone in a nature-inspired palette of greens, oranges and greys that tracks the seasonal colour of Union Square Park outside, with botanical carpeting, curved lacquered walls and burnt-orange velvet headboards. The staircase up from reception carries a carpet pattern adapted, with permission, from the artist Faig Ahmed's work 'Doubts'. Among the room categories sits a Penthouse Suite at the top of the building.

Insider tip

MICHELIN Guide: One Key. Owned and run directly by Marriott International.

03Where to eat

Seahorse, the hotel's modern seafood brasserie, comes from restaurateur John McDonald and Mercer Street Hospitality — the team behind Lure Fishbar, Bowery Meat Company, Bar Mercer and Cha Cha Tang — with chef John Villa serving refined raw-bar classics and seafood with global accents. The 125-seat dining room sits off the hotel's reimagined entrance, sourcing much of its produce from the Union Square Greenmarket across the street. Outdoor tables have since spread along East 17th Street, a quieter, umbrella-shaded alternative to the Park Avenue South side of the building. On Saturdays a prix-fixe brunch runs from noon to 3pm — oysters and bottomless spritzes alongside eggs Benedict, pancakes and shakshuka, with live jazz playing.

04The bar

Two bars bookend the day. By day the Living Room Café pours coffee from Devoción; by night the same room turns into a cocktail bar, inside what was once Guardian Life's insurance hall. Seventeen floors up, Union Square's only rooftop bar looks out over the park and the downtown skyline, tucked in behind the hotel's own marquee sign. On Sundays it hosts 'Sunday Above the Square' with Bowery Meat Company, a 110-dollar brunch of lamb lollipops and wagyu cheeseburger sliders with an open bar and a live DJ.

05Wellbeing

There's no spa, but there is FIT. The hotel's former subterranean bar has been turned into its 24-hour gym, complete with an in-hotel Peloton studio, hydro-massage chairs and a recovery zone. It's a small, telling sign of what the brand now prioritises over the all-night parties that once defined it.

06The neighbourhood

The hotel sits at one of Manhattan's busiest crossroads — Union Square doubling as transit hub, market, stage and park — with the Greenmarket stalls close enough to supply the kitchen. It's the same stretch of the city Dreiser walked to his office a century ago, now shared with NYU students, bookshop browsers and commuters pouring out of the subway beneath the square.

07Making the most of a stay

The Living Room Café keeps extended hours, serving Devoción coffee and pastries each morning with Wi-Fi and private phone booths for working, before shifting into a cocktail bar later in the day. Book Seahorse ahead for weekends: the hotel added weekend brunch at both Seahorse and the rooftop, plus outdoor dining on East 17th Street, in its first year back in business.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.