Warren Street Hotel – Tribeca's bluest building, Firmdale's boldest bet

Sandwiched between two red-brick warehouses on a quiet block of Lower Manhattan, Warren Street Hotel announces itself with a façade of duck-egg blue crittall glass and a bright yellow top, a building that stands out among its Tribeca neighbours by design. It is the third New York hotel from Kit Kemp's Firmdale group, built from the ground up on what had been an open-air car park, and decorated throughout by Kemp and her daughters Minnie and Willow with the label's signature mix of pattern, colour and specially commissioned art. The 69 rooms and suites occupy 11 floors behind floor-to-ceiling windows, some opening onto private terraces with views toward One World Trade Center and the Hudson River. Downstairs, the Warren Street Bar & Restaurant trades in all-day brasserie cooking for guests and Tribeca regulars alike. The MICHELIN Guide gives it Two Keys, an upgrade from the single Key it won on debut, placing it among a small circle of New York hotels judged to offer an exceptional stay.

01The house

Warren Street Hotel is a genuinely new building rather than a conversion, raised on the site of a former car park in a neighbourhood still lined with the restored brick warehouses of its industrial past. The hotel's own description of itself calls the result a glass-fronted, powder-blue new-build that is an ode to creative design and contemporary art, as well as to the neighbourhood's textile industry roots.

That textile history runs through the interiors: Kit Kemp Design Studio wove in her own fabric collaborations with Christopher Farr Cloth, GP&J Baker and Spode, celebrating the area's 19th-century life as a hub for cloth merchants. Also worth pointing out is the specially commissioned art collection, ranging from sculptors Tony Cragg and Wendell Castle to Kemp's own Tall Trees bone china for Spode, hung and suspended throughout the public rooms. A sunshine-yellow lobby sets the tone before guests reach the Drawing Room, a book-lined, fire-warmed retreat with its own honesty bar.

02Rooms and suites

Each of the 69 bedrooms and suites is individually designed, with an emphasis on storytelling through colour, pattern and texture, according to the hotel's own description. Categories run from compact Superior and Luxury rooms on the lower floors up to Junior Terrace, Garden and multi-bedroom Songbird Suites, several with their own landscaped terraces; many suites boast beautifully landscaped terraces and gardens, with wooden trellises sparkling with lights and ferns softening the city skyline.

Insider tip

No on-site gym or spa; guests use a nearby private fitness club instead.

Those terrace gardens are not an afterthought: a Brooklyn landscape designer tends the grass, ferns and cedars on the suite terraces every week, a level of upkeep unusual even by Manhattan's boutique-hotel standards. Inside, rooms are finished with marble bathrooms and subtly high-tech entertainment systems, and dressed with Kemp's own Tall Trees bath and body range. A full-size dressmaker's dummy, stitched with an underwater scene, stands in at least one suite as a nod to Tribeca's textile-trade past.

03Where to eat

The hotel's restaurant, the Warren Street Bar & Restaurant, is a 150-seat, all-day brasserie that is open to locals and hotel guests alike for breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, cocktails and dinner. The kitchen serves much-loved classics and modern British and European dishes, with a menu that has included a lobster roll with tarragon aioli, squash blossoms with lemon-basil ricotta, and a hanger steak au poivre, alongside a seasonal grass-fed burger with caramelised onions that has become a local favourite.

Beside the main dining room sits The Orangery, a glass-roofed space used for private dining and for Firmdale's signature afternoon tea, served on Kemp's own Tall Trees bone china and surrounded by ceramics from Martha Freud set into the walls. Tea here has run to Coronation chicken and smoked salmon sandwiches followed by pastries such as mini canelés, chocolate opera cake and mango-and-pistachio profiteroles. On warmer days, a limited menu moves up to the bright yellow rooftop terrace.

04The bar

The restaurant's bar sits beneath one of the hotel's largest artworks, a vast bronze and plaster light installation suspended over the room, and does double duty as a cocktail room for hotel guests and an evening haunt for the neighbourhood, with live jazz adding to the mood on selected nights. For a quieter nightcap, the Drawing Room's honesty bar lets guests pour their own whisky or wine among the bookshelves before heading up to bed.

05Wellbeing

Warren Street Hotel has no spa or swimming pool of its own, and no on-site gym; guests who want to train are instead given passes to a private fitness club around the corner. Wellness here leans toward the hotel's gardens rather than treatment rooms: the terrace planting, tended weekly, offers private outdoor space that is genuinely rare in a Lower Manhattan hotel, while the rooftop terrace provides an open-air spot for sundowners above the rooftops of Tribeca.

06The neighbourhood

Tribeca's cobbled streets and restored red-brick warehouses, now home to art galleries, independent boutiques and restaurants, sit just steps from the hotel's front door. The area was once Manhattan's wholesale textile district before artists moved into its cast-iron lofts, a history the hotel's own design nods to throughout its fabrics and furnishings.

The Hudson River and its waterfront greenway are a short walk away, as is Brookfield Place in the Financial District, where a string of restaurants overlooks North Cove Marina. SoHo, Chinatown and Little Italy are all within easy reach on foot, making Warren Street Hotel a practical base for exploring downtown Manhattan without needing a taxi.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.