Three buildings, folded into one. The lobby of a hotel, the discipline of a church, the economy of a hostel. We took what each does best and left the rest at the threshold.
Ace Hotel taught us that a lobby can be a living room — that a stranger reading at a long table is not a nuisance but the point. We borrow the layered textiles, the working bar, the secondhand warmth, the materials chosen for how they age rather than how they photograph on opening day.
Wear is welcome here. Brass will tarnish; oak will darken; linen will soften. The building is meant to look better in 2074 than it does today.
The Catholic church taught us proportion. Load-bearing masonry, vaulted ceilings, axial symmetry, lime-washed walls, oak pews, brass fittings, candle-grade lighting. A quiet room with no programmed function — what we call the Chapel — is the most expensive square footage in the building, and the least negotiable.
A church is built to outlast its parishioners. So is this.
The hostel taught us economy. Shared sleep, shared cooking, shared washing. A communal table long enough to seat twelve strangers. A bed for the price of a decent dinner — fifty-five to seventy-five dollars a night — without apologizing for either the bed or the price.
The young traveler is the client. The next century is the deadline.
A thousand-year construction logic. Every assembly is repairable by any tradesperson in any century, with hand tools and local material.
The structure is quarried limestone bearing on spread footings, with mass timber floors of glue-laminated spruce. Lime mortar is used throughout, soft enough to fail before the stone does, so a stone can always be replaced without breaking its neighbors. The roof is Vermont slate. Plumbing is brass. Wiring is in conduit. Everything else — every door, every sill, every shelf — is white oak.
Drawings, in the order one reads a building: the whole, then the floor, then the cut.
Six programs, nested. Three sleeping rooms — bunk, cell, suite — and three shared spaces — refectory, common house, baths — that together make the building one piece.
Every room in the building is a variation on one detail: a plaster wall, an oak threshold, a brass fitting, a linen curtain. The hierarchy is one of size and privacy, never of finish.
Programmatic detail forthcoming.
A short palette. Each entry chosen for how it ages, how it is repaired, and where it comes from.
Nothing in the building is a composite. No laminate, no veneer, no engineered surface that cannot be sanded back to itself. Every material has a quarry, a forest, or a foundry of origin, and every assembly can be undone with a hammer.
Material schedule forthcoming.
A frank accounting of where this building meets the New York City Construction Code, and where it would have to ask the Department of Buildings for grace.
A building of this kind is not a renderingʼs problem. It is an Occupancy Group R-1 transient lodging house under Chapter 3 of the NYC Construction Code; it owes Chapter 10 two means of egress from every sleeping room; it owes Chapter 11 an accessible route to every public function. The Multiple Dwelling Law applies. The Energy Code applies. Local Law 88 applies. We have read them.
Code brief forthcoming.
Bed count, rate card, square footage. Everything legible at a glance, set in mono so it cannot lie.
| Program | Beds | Sq. Ft. | Rate / night |
|---|
Pricing schedule forthcoming.