Why you should experience ModernHaus SoHo in New York, NY.
ModernHaus SoHo is an artful luxury hotel where SoHo's gallery heritage, downtown creative independence, Bauhaus-inflected design culture and enduring appetite for artistic experimentation converge within a glass tower overlooking Lower Manhattan.
Set along Grand Street near Thompson Street and just steps from SoHo's cast-iron district, the hotel occupies the former James New York building, which Thor Equities reimagined around a collection drawn from Jack J. Sitt's personal holdings and a design style influenced by the Bauhaus movement. Harland Miller's three large canvases establish the visual language immediately inside the marble lobby, while reclaimed wood, custom furnishings and expansive glazing carry a warmer interpretation of modernism into the guestrooms above. Works by George Condo, Jean Dubuffet, Hans Hofmann, Nicolas Party and KAWS extend throughout public and private spaces, positioning art as a structural component of the hotel's identity. The result is a hotel where Jack J. Sitt's collecting, Bauhaus geometry and major contemporary artists translate SoHo's gallery culture into a hospitality environment conceived around art as its central creative language.
What you should know about ModernHaus SoHo.
ModernHaus SoHo is best known for opening in 2021 as a 114-room hotel following an year-and-a-half renovation of the former James New York - SoHo, with Thor Equities director Jack J. Sitt personally overseeing both the renovation and curation of an extensive modern and contemporary art collection. The collection encompasses dozens of paintings and sculptures by Alexander Calder, Hans Hartung, George Condo, Harland Miller, Jean Dubuffet, Hans Hofmann, Nicolas Party and KAWS, distributing works by internationally recognized artists across guestrooms and communal spaces. Ten accommodation categories originally ranged from the 26-square-meter Modern Queen to the 122-square-meter Gallery Penthouse, while oversized windows, reclaimed wood floors and custom furnishings carried the Bauhaus-influenced concept throughout the 114-room inventory. The property additionally incorporates 11,000 square feet of outdoor space, including multiple terraces and a rooftop pool, creating an unusually extensive exterior program for a compact Downtown Manhattan hotel. Sitt's personal curatorial direction, the Calder-to-KAWS collection, ten-category accommodation program and substantial outdoor footprint established ModernHaus SoHo around a convergence of private collecting, modernist design and vertical urban hospitality.
Restaurateurs David Rabin and James Julius developed another creative chapter inside the property through Twenty Three Grand, commissioning chef Ashley Rath to lead an internationally influenced restaurant beneath a greenhouse-like structure whose glass roof and walls retract in 90 seconds. KAWS connects the restaurant directly with Sitt's broader collection through Good Intentions, a large sculpture positioned among the greenery of the Lower Terrace and visible within Twenty Three Grand's outdoor environment. Jimmy continues the building's longstanding rooftop character above the restaurant, pairing the eighteenth-floor lounge with the pool and panoramic Lower Manhattan views while preserving one of the most recognizable elements inherited from the property's earlier incarnation. Together, David Rabin, James Julius, Ashley Rath and KAWS extend ModernHaus SoHo's curatorial thesis beyond the lobby and guestrooms, allowing contemporary art, restaurant authorship and outdoor architecture to operate as interconnected parts of the hotel.
How to fold ModernHaus SoHo into your trip.
ModernHaus SoHo works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing experimental art, architectural preservation and downtown collecting through the streets surrounding Grand Street.
Begin at Judd Foundation, where Donald Judd's former home and studio at 101 Spring Street preserves the artist's permanent installations of his own work alongside pieces by Dan Flavin, Frank Stella and other figures within the cast-iron building he purchased as his New York residence and working environment. Continue to Drawing Center, founded by curator Martha Beck as an institution devoted specifically to drawing and housed in a Wooster Street building whose later renovation by Claire Weisz and WXY Architecture expanded its galleries while retaining its relationship with SoHo's converted industrial architecture. Conclude at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, whose origins in Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman's collecting developed into an institution devoted to LGBTQ+ art, building a collection spanning thousands of works and generations of artists from its Wooster Street home. The progression moves from Donald Judd's rebellious integration of art and architecture through Martha Beck's institution devoted to drawing into Leslie and Lohman's collection-driven cultural project, revealing the artistic experimentation and independent collecting traditions surrounding ModernHaus SoHo.
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