New York's Roosevelt Island to get its first hotel
Plans have been announced to open the first hotel on New York's oft-overlooked Roosevelt Island, a two-mile stretch of land in the East River between Manhattan and Queens.
It is being launched by Graduate Hotels, a rapidly-expanding chain that specialises in boutique accommodation in US college towns, and will sit at the entrance to the new Cornell Tech campus, which opens on the island in September 2017. The hotel itself is due to open in 2019.
Alongside 196 rooms the hotel will feature an on-site restaurant, roof terrace and extensive facilities for meetings and events, not to mention unique vistas of New York's iconic skyline from its floor-to-ceiling windows.
Behind the hotel's sleek and modern design is Snøhetta, a Norwegian firm whose recent projects have included the Oslo Opera House, the reconstruction of NYC's Times Square and the ultra-cool 'Hilbert's Hotel' hotel coming to Helsinki's waterfront.
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It is a potentially momentous development for an area of the city that has remained beneath the radar of most vistors to the city, thanks in part to its curious inaccessibility: the Queensboro Bridge passes straight over it, although a Subway station and aerial tramway do provide transportation to the rest of the city.
But Roosevelt Island is not without its attractions. Of particular note is The Octagon, originally the main entrance to the New York City Lunatic Asylum throughout much of the 19th century, which is on the National Regiester of Historic Places.
Vistors can also head to Southpoint Park, where the austere ruin of the Smallpox Memorial Hospital harks back to a New York of the Victorian era.
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