Hotel on Rivington

Hotel on Rivington

On Rivington Street, a 21-storey tower rises above the tenement-scaled blocks of the Lower East Side, its floor-to-ceiling glass walls, a signature of architects Grzywinski + Pons, turning many of its 108 rooms into private lookouts over the downtown skyline. Some rooms open onto balconies, others hold deep soaking tubs, details that set this hotel apart from the boxier design hotels nearby. Essex Street Market, the Orchard Street Bargain District and the Onetwentyeight Gallery sit within a few blocks, and SoHo, Tribeca, Nolita, Little Italy and the East Village are all walkable from the door. Inside, there's a restaurant and bar, a fitness center on the third floor, and meeting rooms for guests mixing business with the trip; staff work across seven languages, from Arabic to Russian. The hotel no longer includes breakfast, so guests who want it built into the rate should look elsewhere; a deposit, up to $500, is collected at check-in, and an extra bed runs $50 a night if the room category allows one. Pets are welcome. This suits a reader who wants a design-conscious base for gallery-hopping and late dinners on the Lower East Side, someone happy to arrange her own coffee and treat the deposit as a formality rather than a surprise. It suits her less if she's traveling with a family needing kids' amenities, or if included breakfast and a lobby loaded with resort extras are the point of the trip. What she gets instead is a room built around its window: floor-to-ceiling glass that turns the skyline into part of the furniture. A 21-storey Lower East Side tower where floor-to-ceiling glass turns most of its 108 rooms into skyline lookouts, steps from Essex Street Market and SoHo. Breakfast isn't included and a deposit is required at check-in, so budget accordingly. Pets are welcome, seven languages are spoken at the desk.