Crosby Street Hotel

Class: First

Style: Contemporary classic

Rooms: 86

London's Firmdale Hotels is a regular on these pages - the paint had hardly dried at the company's Haymarket Hotel when it featured in our 2007 Hot List. Crosby Street Hotel opened in September, a brand-new, eco-conscious construction in brick, steel and glass on the site of a former parking lot in SoHo. Within weeks it was humming along nicely, as confident and sassy as its more established English cousins. With its bespoke high ceilings and vast, warehouse-style windows, owner and design director Kit Kemp has created an eloquent repository for her vast collection of contemporary art, oversized sofas upholstered in a patchwork of fabrics, antiques and mirrored chests, 1950s lights, appliquéd cushions and limed-wood tables. But there is plenty of substance behind all this mesmerising, multi-layered styling. The staff are charming and efficient; the cocktails, snacks and gastro-pub-style meals in The Crosby Bar - which stretches the entire block from Crosby Street to Lafayette - are well-judged and clearly appreciated by a moneyed, youngish crowd of SoHo shoppers; and the set breakfasts, served from 7am, are a good deal at about $25 including juice and coffee. Unusually for New York, the hotel has two intelligently articulated outdoor spaces: a sculpture garden for guests; and a shady patio off the bar. There are also plans for a rooftop kitchen garden with space for 10 chickens. Source: Conde Nast Traveller The Hot List 2010.