Warren Street Hotel review: A bright escape amid Manhattan’s concrete jungle

Located in one of Manhattan’s coolest neighbourhoods, this luxury hotel is full of colour and joy and is one of the best new properties in the Big Apple.

Luxury Junior Suite at the Warren Street Hotel in New York.

Pure joy is what comes to mind on entering the Warren Street Hotel in New York’s downtown Tribeca neighbourhood. Sitting between solid brick warehouses and apartments, the dull grey of asphalt and the shadows of the towering skyscrapers, the glass and blue steel structure is like a ray of sunshine. My family and I walk wearily through doors, flanked by terracotta-potted topiary hedges, after a hectic day navigating busy Manhattan. The blast of colour, pattern, texture and art we encounter – all seemingly impossibly layered over each other – instantly lifts our mood.

A Delux room at Kit Kemp’s latest iteration.

The drawing room of the Warren Street Hotel.

This is the third property in the Big Apple from British interior designer Kit Kemp and her husband Tim and their group, Firmdale Hotels. The first, Dorset Square Hotel, opened in 1985 in Marylebone, London, on the site of an old cricket ground. They now have 11 hotels and nine restaurants in London and New York and have become known for their eclectic, colourful interiors, offering much needed respite – and an injection of life – from the muted neutrals and beiges that dominate many other luxury hotel brands.

The Songbird Suite at The Warren Street Hotel is incredibly spacious.

There is no need for hushed reverence here; to feel like you must be on your best behaviour or refrain from touching any pristine, polished surface. In fact, it is the opposite. Every square inch of wall and floor is covered in art, fabric, wallpaper or all three. The only bare surfaces are the floor to ceiling windows that bring so much light into the rooms, something I have not experienced when staying in New York, especially in older buildings where space is scarce and windows are small, shoved in a corner as an afterthought.

The delightful Warren Street Hotel restaurant and bar.

A delightful member of staff take us up in the wallpapered lift to level seven and a Songbird Suite. Each of the 69 rooms is individually designed by Kemp and all have different themes. “There are birds throughout this suite. I bet you can’t guess how many,” he says, showing us into the room. “124!” pipes up my excited son. “Ah … not quite that many,” our host says with a laugh. “But let’s see if you can find them.” We discover the first on the bookshelves of the dining room of this extraordinarily spacious 84sq m suite, another on the lamp next to the chesterfield fabric sofa and opposite the fireplace in the living room. The walls are covered in green fabric and adorned with more fabulous art; the bedroom has a spectacular floral fabric bedhead and mannequin, features that Kemp has become known for in her other properties, such as Ham Yard Hotel in London’s Soho.

The Songbird Suite has a number of birds scattered through the interior design.

There is a walk-in-wardrobe space (which might be as big as the first New York hotel room my husband and I stayed in back in our early 20s) as well as distinctive British design and hospitality touches: a freestanding iron tub in the marble bathroom, towel warmer, vases of flowers, delicate floral china tea cups in the kitchenette and, of course, metres of wallpaper.

The beautiful lobby of Warren Street Hotel.

It is full of colour and art.

Add a record player with some easy-listening vinyl and – even in a city like Manhattan where adventure and possibility beckon on every corner – we don’t want to leave. So we don’t. We close the thick, sound-proof interconnecting doors to our children’s adjacent room, leave them with their iPads (they have walked around half of New York, including the Natural History Museum, which alleviates some guilt), and sit and enjoy a glass of champagne on the sofa in the sunshine while listening to Amy Winehouse. It is blissful, and ends up being one of my ­favourite afternoons of our two weeks in New York.

The Songbird Suite includes a stunning marble bathroom.

We spend the next hour or so watching the sunset as the lights come on in apartments across the road (they have quite nice interiors, too) and a European-inspired wine bar called WarrenPeace comes to life. Its cool patrons sit outdoors at candlelit tables, sipping glasses of rose and no doubt discussing the need for more peace and less war. Tribeca is one of the more residential neighbourhoods in New York, with a non-touristy vibe that allows you to pretend you’re a local, not just visiting.

Thoughts of food eventually drag us out of our beautiful digs and we go in search of something quick and easy, which we find a few blocks over at Los Tacos No 1, where patrons stand and eat at benches. Guacamole and corn chips tide us over while we wait the 10 minutes for our tacos; chicken, steak, pork or cactus. No one is brave enough to try the cactus but the rest are delicious. On the way back, we grab some ice-cream from the giant Whole Foods supermarket a few blocks away, and my children are blown away by the range of flavours. They enjoy every mouthful back at the hotel, ensconced in our suite’s bathroom, the only safe space for them to have such a mess-making dessert in such a gorgeously designed hotel.

The restaurant of Warren Street Hotel where breakfast is served each morning.

The next morning we go for breakfast at the restaurant downstairs, which is also a cool bar and eatery in the evenings. There is an a la carte menu as well as a small buffet of pastries, cereal and fruit. English hospitality is on show again here, with white tablecloths, beautiful china, ornate tea and coffee pots and even toast stands (which bring back fond memories of having breakfast with my British grandfather). My husband goes for the full English, which consists of eggs, bacon, pork sausage, housemade black pudding, baked beans and tomatoes. I opt for the more virtuous but still delicious yoghurt, fruit and granola bowl, which may have been supplemented by sampling various parts of my husband’s breakfast for research purposes, especially the expertly cooked crispy bacon.

The unmissable exterior of the Warren Street Hotel.

We head off into New York for another day of sightseeing, already looking forward to our return to the hotel. The Kemps took three years in the middle of the pandemic to turn what was a carpark into this stunning property which openedin early 2024. “Kit chose Cerulean as the colour for the building because it reminded her of the blue summer sky and the joy it brings,” says a staff member on the way out. Joy. It’s precisely what the Warren Street Hotel brings.

In the know

Warren Street Hotel is at 86 Warren St, Tribeca. A 31sq m superior room with a When at Warren package from$US895 ($1447) a night, twin-share, including breakfast, a bottle of champagne, 2pm check-out and a candle by Kit Kemp at turndown. A one-bedroom Songbird suite from $US3950 a night, twin-share.

Milanda Rout was a guest of Firmdale Hotels.

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