Review of Made hotel in New York

Regular visitors know what to expect from most New York hotels: gloomy, thick-pillared lobbies, chintzy decor past its best, bell-boys in tired uniforms craving a little sunshine. In the bedrooms, vast desks you’ll never sit at, carpet scarred by misdeeds you’d rather not imagine.

Fancy something a bit different? Enter ‘Made’, a striking new prospect, slap-bang in the heart of Manhattan on West 29th Street.

In years past, it was a part of town you’d march through head down on your way to Macy’s or the Empire State Building a couple of blocks away. Lately, swish architects and hoteliers have given it a fresh lease of life and – as befits all upcoming neighbourhoods – a trendy nickname: ‘NoMad’, meaning simply north of Madison (Square).

Made in Manhattan: Pictured is the hotel’s charming coffee shop Paper with its large communal table and earthenware tiles

Now, amid the shabby stores hawking fake shades, fake watches and fake jewellery, something refreshingly real has awoken. It’s something you’ll notice in the artisan coffee shops, minimal restaurants, and most distinctly at the 18-storey Made.

There’s much that sets Made apart from everyday New York hotels. For a start it’s set back from the street and, given there’s no great glowing sign – just a modest brass plaque on the sidewalk – it has a discreet quality, not needing to brag about itself the way so much does in this city.

Step inside, and the first thing that strikes you is how light it is, thanks to vast windows across its front (open wide on my visit in June) and an outdoor staircase at the back taking guests up to a private patio. The ceiling is big chunks of burnished cherry wood, like a giant gravity-defying game of Jenga. It’s one of the few New York lobbies where you’re actually tempted to linger, not least owing to the charming coffee shop ‘Paper’ with its large, communal table, its earthenware tiles, and its plump pastries glistening with caramelised sugar. That’s breakfast sorted, then.

James writes: ‘There’s much that sets Made apart from everyday New York hotels.’ This image shows the lobby bar

The hotel contains something you rarely see in New York – greenery. Oodles of pot plants and hanging baskets everywhere. Pictured is the rooftop bar, Good Behavior

On lintels around the reception desk are hand-carved wooden figures and ceramics: not a speck of chintz in sight. There’s also a spacious bar with low-slung leather couches. It has the look of a very stylish living room: which of course is the point. They want you to feel right at home. And there’s something else you rarely see in New York: greenery. Oodles of pot plants and hanging baskets everywhere.

Up in the bedrooms, there’s no trace of tattered old carpets, with bright wood panelling instead. If the unadorned concrete ceilings may seem a touch too hipster, it’s a reminder of the overall endeavour to keep things honest and neutral. Gone too is the heavy furniture that cramps many such bedrooms: instead of cupboards and desks, there’s a nifty racking system from which everything you need smartly unfolds.

Instead of the imperiously hefty beds you find in most Manhattan hotels, here your substantial mattress sits atop a low wooden pedestal, saving lots of space. Indeed, these are some of the only New York bedrooms where you’d have room to swing a cat, if that’s the kind of thing you like to do on holidays.

‘Up in the bedrooms, there’s no trace of tattered old carpets, with bright wood panelling instead,’ writes James. ‘If the unadorned concrete ceilings may seem a touch too hipster, it’s a reminder of the overall endeavour to keep things honest and neutral’

Enticing: A Made bathroom, which features a boulder-style sink and the obligatory rain shower

Made’s Ferris restaurant (pictured), is in the basement. James sadly didn’t get a chance to pay it a visit

My brief trip didn’t give me chance to visit the acclaimed restaurant ‘Ferris’ in the hotel’s basement, but I did enjoy its other treasure: up on the roof is ‘Good Behavior’, a bar seemingly designed for quite the opposite. 

Boasting two balconies, a 22ft curved glass wall and a cute little tiki bar, this is the place I want to gather friends for my next milestone birthday. The DJ plays Cyndi Lauper and Rick Astley, and the bartender mixes a punchy, peppery tequila/mescal cocktail called a ‘Dirty Finery’.

On its website, the hotel declares itself ‘a community of connected, consciously moving influencers’. I never regarded myself as one of them till now, but – as the setting sun turns the neighbouring Empire State Building to gold – I order a second cocktail, happy to consider myself a Made man.