RH Opens an Intimate Hotel
If you’ve ever dreamed of vacationing at a RH (formerly Restoration Hardware) store, well, now you can. Just in time for New York Fashion Week, RH Guesthouse—the interiors brand’s first hospitality concept—opens in the Meatpacking District, just 300 feet from the RH Gallery flagship store. Housed in a striking 1887 triangular loft building at 55 Gansevoort Street, the property features six rooms and three suites kitted out with soothingly monochromatic furnishings in merino wool, velvet, and stainless steel. RH chairman and CEO (as well as brand avatar) Gary Friedman’s own penthouse occupies the top floor, and is sometimes available for bookings.
“What we’re trying to do is to create a new market for travelers seeking privacy,” says Freidman, explaining RH Guesthouse’s strict no-social media policy. “It’s one thing that the Internet has taken away, because you can Google anything about everybody. I think that there’s going to be a desire to find your place, to be in that place that’s special to you that gives you that level of privacy, exclusivity, and luxury that you just can’t find anywhere else.”
To wit, there are no public events at RH Guesthouse. Or even a lobby per se—just a discrete private entrance with a 24-hour concierge. Instead, there’s a rooftop dining terrace with trellised London plane trees and sculptural evergreens abutting a 40-foot infinity pool with breathtaking views over Manhattan for guests to exclusively enjoy. The Dining Room, the unassumingly named restaurant on the first floor, sends up open-hearth cooked dishes like rotisserie chicken or cauliflower steak.
For evening amusement, there’s the intimate subterranean Champagne & Caviar bar (which, like the Dining Room, is open to the public). Or guests may simply wish to retire to their rooms to take in the dreamy vibes. Each room has two bathrooms with sculpted Fantini fixtures, and suites feature a soaking tub carved from a single block of Tuscan travertine. Other amenities include FreshBeds, gourmet pantries, armoires cleverly concealing personal gym equipment, nightstands featuring wireless charging, and iPads for personalized climate control with integrated HEPA air filtration.
“Someone asked me, ‘How long have you been working on the Guesthouse?’” recalls Freidman. “And I told them about 30 years, because that’s how long I’ve been thinking about it. That’s how long I’ve been traveling to really great places and asking myself questions like, why don’t they have this? And why hasn’t anybody thought of that?”
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