New York: back in the city that never sleeps

It’s September 11, exactly 17 years since I stood on a street in Greenwich Village and watched the Twin Towers fall.

The new New York: Hudson Yards.

Touch down: New York. It’s September 11, exactly 17 years since I stood on a street in Greenwich Village and watched the Twin Towers fall. The date’s a fluke, one of those odd twists of happenstance that can seem, just briefly, to hold clues to the meaning of life. Everything changes, New York most of all. I left the city, ultimately; moved back to Australia and winced whenever an old TV show panned across lower Manhattan with a reminder of what had been lost. Much else has gone since: Carnegie Deli, Elaine’s, the Oak Room at the Plaza, CBGBs and Harlem’s legendary Lenox Lounge. New York institutions that leave a gap and a pang. Nostalgia, for better or for worse, is a powerful force in the city. But so is reinvention.

Everything changes and in 2014, the glinting glass exclamation mark of One World Trade Centre rose to reclaim the sky downtown. From the top of the 104-storey building you can see the curvature of the Earth, and the vista below, teeming with possibility, can still make me catch my breath. An unfamiliar flash of sunstruck glass near the river announces not another new skyscraper but the emergence of a whole new neighbourhood, Hudson Yards.

I have just four days to sample all that’s new and noteworthy in my former hometown. Happily, one of those newcomers is the flat white: thanks to an influx of Australian-run cafes, there’s now an alternative to the vats of convenience-store drip coffee that fuelled my younger self. Caffeine on board, and plugged in once again to that mysteriously energising current that pulses from the sidewalk, I head to the epicentre of regeneration: the lower west side.

Cool: the High Line. Picture: Alamy

The conversion of a dilapidated railway line into the elevated park known as the High Line has Pied-Pipered a shift south-west. The Whitney Museum of American Art decamped from uptown three years ago, establishing a landmark at the High Line’s southern end; Hudson Yards bookends the north. Soaring skyward atop an old railyard, the high-end megaproject covers roughly 11ha in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood. This futuristic medley of office, retail, residential and art-filled public space is billed as the largest private real estate development in the US. It’s big, bold and look-at-me flashy.

But New York is all things to all people. The city is fired by idiosyncrasy as well as innovation and much of the constant urban renewal respects the quirks and character of the past. Take the Jane Hotel, which I last visited when it was the Jane Theatre. The red-brick corner building is now the West Village outpost of an ever-expanding empire run by hip hoteliers Eric Goode and Sean MacPherson. The Jane, at one time an affordable refuge for sailors, in 1912 sheltered the surviving crew of the Titanic. The tiny rooms are now pod-like single or bunk-bed guest rooms, with amenities such as free wi-fi, air-con and a small TV. As long as you don’t mind the shared bathrooms, it’s an unusually low-cost place to lay your head and an authentic experience of that semi-mythical place known as old New York. Bohemian-chic décor such as mismatched couches and a derelict disco ball offer a romanticised vision of faded glory, and lobby staff in vintage bell-hop uniforms fetch room keys from banks of wooden pigeonholes.

Jane Hotel. Picture: supplied

I grab lunch at the hotel’s Old Rose, a charming sun-drenched room with high ceilings, checkerboard floor tiles and massive windows overlooking the Hudson River. One quinoa bowl later, I hail a taxi uptown. New York’s iconic yellow cabs have ceded so much ground to the fleets summoned by ride-hailing apps that they almost feel retro. Ironically, I’m in one of the boxy yellow vans once dubbed the Taxi of Tomorrow, the best part of which is the addition of a sunroof for skyscraper-peeping. A peerless mix of neo-gothic, art deco, postmodern and contemporary architecture blurs past overhead and I make a note to check in on some of my favourite interiors: Grand Central Station’s ceiling constellations; the Chrysler Building’s art deco elevators; and the Beaux-Arts magnificence of the New York Public Library’s Rose Main Reading Room.

The sprawling Gilded Age lobby of the Lotte New York Palace Hotel instantly joins that list. The storied Midtown institution began life in 1882 as a cluster of six neoclassical townhouses. In the 1970s, that building was annexed to a 55-storey skyscraper and today the Palace features luxury guest rooms with up-close views of the majestic St Patrick’s Cathedral, as well as a more contemporary hotel-within-a-hotel called The Towers. This is where you’ll find the suites, which run the gamut of size and price, right up to the 465sqm Champagne Suite, a tycoon-worthy triplex penthouse with floor-to-ceiling cityscape views, a private elevator and a hot tub on its rooftop terrace.

The Palace exemplifies New York’s easy blend of old and new, an organic twinning that allows a sophisticated modern hotel like the Sofitel New York, 30 storeys of curved limestone and glass, to sit comfortably in Midtown amid stately old buildings such as the New York Yacht Club and the Algonquin Hotel.

With the official tourism organisation NYC & Company predicting 65 million tourists by the end of the year, up from 62.8 million in 2017, the city needs to cater to a broad spectrum of tastes. The Art Deco-inspired Sofitel, part of the Paris-based Accor group, delivers Manhattan with a French twist, from the French-speaking staff to the Gaby brasserie and bar. Located in the heart of the Theatre District, the Sofitel is the official hotel of the Tony Awards and staff will happily steer you towards the best of Broadway.

Chic: the Gaby brasserie and bar.

The last thing I imagined, while reckoning with a changed world that September morning years ago, was that someone would one day create a feelgood 9/11 musical. And yet here it is: Come From Away, the 2017 Tony Award-winner playing to sell-out crowds before heading to Melbourne in July. It’s an exuberant account of the days following the 2001 terrorist attacks, when 7000 airline passengers from Europe were rerouted to a tiny town in Newfoundland, Canada, and welcomed with an outpouring of kindness and goodwill. Audiences were initially wary of the show, but its buoyant celebration of human decency has spread nothing but good cheer.

Everything changes. As evening falls and I head back to my hotel through the madding crowds of Midtown, the lights of Times Square begin to shimmer and blur before me. Must have got something in my eye.

Perfect for: Anyone with a pulse.

Getting there: Count the ways; I flew Air Canada via Vancouver.

Dining: A data wonk has calculated you can nosh at a different New York eatery every day for 22.7 years and never visit the same place twice. City Chic Experiences (citychicexperiences.com) makes it easy:a private car ushers small groups between Michelin-starred restaurants for a curated sampling of their menus, with three- and five-stop tours.

Must do: Get out on the streets. A CityPASS provides entry to six top attractions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Empire State Building and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

Bottom Line: The Jane Hotel (thejanenyc.com) from $95 per night for a Standard cabin and from $248 for a Captain’s Cabin with ensuite. Lotte New York Palace (lottenypalace.com) from $547 for a Superior Room to an eye-watering $34,500 for the Champagne Suite. Sofitel New York (sofitel-new-york.com) from $377 for a Classic Room to $5908 for the 112sqm Presidential Suite.

nycgo.com