New York City Finally Gets its Aman

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United States

A Hushed Retreat in the Heart of New York City

What does a metropolitan escape look like in the 21st century? For Aman — the Switzerland-based group that made its name with privacy-obsessed resorts before welcoming its #amanjunkies to cities like Tokyo, Venice and, as of this month, New York — the answer has less to do with glitz and flash than with more elusive city qualities: quiet, serenity, a bit of coddling. This is true even on 57th and Fifth, one of Manhattan’s busiest corners, where it moved into the iconic Crown Building (c. 1921) and spent several years renovating, regilding its gleaming, gold-detailed facade and keeping much of the Beaux-Arts architecture intact while updating the interiors with Aman’s calming East-meets-West neutrals. This time, the materials — whether textured chocolate-brown marble, blackened steel or handsome oak and walnut — are customized throughout to create 83 suites replete with pivoting louvered doors and rice-paper lighting, conjuring the sensation of staying inside a lantern that happens to be strung two blocks south of Central Park. Every soundproof suite has its own fireplace, though urbanites will no doubt be drawn to the soaring 14th-floor lobby, which features a recently installed 7,000-square-foot all-season terrace — there’s a retractable roof — and houses both Arva, an Italian trattoria serving Mediterranean dishes like salt-encrusted black sea bass and freshly made fusilli, and Nama, a smaller restaurant dedicated to Japanese raw preparations and the country’s elemental washoku cuisine. The other major attraction is the three-story, 25,000-square-foot spa, where two dedicated “spa houses” (outfitted with hotel beds, terraces, plunge pools and treatment rooms) offer half- or full-day experiences centered on either a Russian banya or Turkish hammam. For a brief period, from 1929 to 1932, this building was the original home of New York’s Museum of Modern Art; touring it now, one’s left with the sense that it’s welcomed another sort of institution that will draw people inward for years to come. Rooms from $3,200; aman.com.

Plush pan-Nordic is the look at…