NYC’S MARTHA WASHINGTON HOTEL OFFERS MORE THAN A SLICE OF GREAT DESIGN — THERE’S PIZZA, TOO
By JAMES TARMY
The architect Annabelle Selldorf has made her reputation in the art world, designing and restoring some of the world’s top museums and galleries. Her firm, Selldorf Architects, has designed the polished concrete headquarters of the David Zwirner Gallery in New York from the ground up, restored the subtly ornate Edwardian Hauser & Wirth Gallery in London’s Picadilly, and completely renovated buildings for Le Stanze del Vetro, a new museum devoted to glassmaking on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice.
Her status as a hospitality architect is less established, so when she agreed to renovate the public spaces in New York’s Martha Washington Hotel architecture insiders perked up.
As it stood, the building wasn’t without its challenges.
Built in 1905 as a women’s only hotel, its Renaissance-revival interiors and facade had become, over time, an integral (if slightly ragged) part of Manhattan’s Flatiron District. As the hotel eventually turned co-ed in 1998, and the neighborhood flourished in the early 2000s — buzzy boutique hotels The NoMad, the Ace, and the Roger New York are also nearby — retaining some of the hotel’s hundred-year long provenance became more than a civic gesture, it was also good business. (Playing up its status as a haven for single women, like a young Eleanor Roosevelt, was presumably also a fairly good marketing strategy… for both sexes.)
Martha Washington Hotel, New York, New York, early twentieth century. Source: William J. Roege/The New York Historical Society/Getty Images
Selldorf didn’t disappoint. She gutted the ground floor and dropped it several feet to street level, designed everything from the blue-concrete floors to the fixtures of a new restaurant in the entrance of the building, and installed a soaring wood-paneled bar in the rear.
The hotel remained open during the renovations, and got a new restaurant, Marta, in the process. Helmed by Danny Meyer’s hospitality group, it bills itself as a “new casual Italian restaurant” and has been open for less than two weeks. It might still be an unknown quantity, but that’s changing fast: On the day that I interviewed Selldorf, almost every table at lunch was filled by 12pm.
The Challenge
James Tarmy: Were there any surprises, in the design or construction process?
Annabelle Selldorf: Every day! It was a very tough project, because, number one, this building is an old, venerable building, and there’s a lot of history to it. We had to get approvals from the Landmarks Preservation Committee. And then it was a long process of lowering the floor and bringing the services in.
JT: Right, tell me about dropping the floor.
AS: Not only did it give us higher ceilings, but it also made the building handicap accessible and therefore much more useful. And putting a restaurant right along the facade gives a much more welcoming relationship between the outside and inside, and says that the restaurant is available for everybody, not just hotel guests.
JT: It sounds like a Herculean undertaking.
AS: That was really a big deal. There was a big hole here, but oddly enough, the rough work that happens at the beginning is relatively easy. Later on, when it comes to layering the finishes, there’s more attention to getting the dimensions right, and getting each trade to work with one another.
Marta at the Martha Washington Hotel, NYC. Architect Annabelle Selldorf gutted the building’s frontage and dropped the floor to street level to open up the space. Source: Jonathan Chesley/Selldorf Architects
JT: Speaking of the finishes, those polished black tiles on the pizza ovens are gorgeous.
AS: You like the pizza ovens? Well, they are complicated. There’s a large exhaust duct that has to go through the entire building — how does that work? There are these sort of mechanical issues that need to be figured out before you can even think about what kind of tile you put on.
Creating A Narrative
JT: A hotel has so many different kinds of people coming in and out, how do you create an interior that will feel luxurious for everyone and yet doesn’t feel generic?
AS: A lot of it has to do with having some sort of imagination, and that’s part and parcel of everything you do in the creative process. You have to have an idea to begin with: “Wouldn’t it be beautiful if…” You have to create the narrative, and have the fantasy, and enthusiasm, to do something interesting.
JT: Do you have a favorite part?
AS: That’s like asking who your favorite child would be. I could say, “Oh, I love the floor,” and then my next comment would be “Oh, I love the columns, I love the stone.” I like it all in combination with each other, and maybe that’s the key thing.
Marta at the Martha Washington Hotel, NYC. The tiled pizza ovens were a particular challenge to install. Source: Jonathan Chesley/Selldorf Architects
JT: Is designing a hotel any different than a gallery or museum?
AS: The good thing about designing hospitality is that they tend to feed you. But yes, I think everything is a little bit different. By and large, hospitality rides on novelty, and that’s not usually interesting for me. But this is the exception: we had the opportunity to do something new and fresh and modern and festive, but it doesn’t feel like it was just this year’s restaurant.
JT: It has staying power.
AS: I come in and think, yeah. We’re going to come back here in 10 years and still love it.
Martha Washington Hotel and Marta restaurant are at 29 East 29th Street (NoMad), New York City. +1-212-689-1900, chelseahotels.com
(ORIGINAL ARTICLES)
STAYING POWER
