Review of The Bryant Park Hotel, by Andrew Mueller

The Bryant Park Hotel in Manhattan, New York is a best-of-both-worlds proposition. On the outside, it's a minor masterpiece of 1920s architecture, a commanding gothic presence wrought from black and gold brick.

On the inside of this luxury hotel, the rooms are elegantly modernist, with white walls, wooden floors and deceptively simple furnishings masking impressive features. The location, in the heart of Midtown, opposite the cool green haven from which this luxury hotel takes its name, is all but unbeatable. It has become unsurprisingly popular with fashion, music and film types.

The facilities

The Bryant Park is also something of a nightlife destination, boasting a well-regarded Japanese restaurant, the Koi, and a fashionable late-opening basement club, the Cellar Bar. This luxury hotel also boasts a fitness centre and a screening room.

The rooms

The Bryant Park has 129 rooms, some with terraces. In a city where many luxury hotels barely offer the guest sufficient room to change their mind, the space offered at the Bryant Park is refreshing. It's not much of an exaggeration to suggest that some New York City hotel rooms are smaller than the Bryant Park's enormous baths.

All the rooms at this luxury hotel feature wall-mounted flat-screen televisions with Internet connection, well-stocked mini-bars, wireless Internet, Bose radios, fax machines and Bose stereos with iPod docks. There are several genuinely thoughtful touches - umbrellas in the closet, a safe big enough to stash a laptop in and a bedside device which generates soothing noises should the traffic around Bryant Park become too distracting.