Sohotel, New York

Why you should experience Sohotel in New York, NY.

Sohotel is a storied boutique hotel where Bowery's raffish independence, political theater, immigrant-era hospitality and centuries of downtown reinvention converge within one of Manhattan's longest-lived lodging addresses.

Set along Broome Street near Bowery and just steps from Elizabeth Street, the hotel occupies a site used for lodging since 1805, when the surrounding corridor was evolving from an early Manhattan thoroughfare into a dense world of theaters, taverns and working-class entertainment. The oldest portion of the present building dates to around 1840, replacing the wooden Military and Civic Hotel, whose earlier meeting rooms had hosted the Equal Rights wing of the Democratic Party. A substantial remodeling gave the building a fourth story and much of its surviving appearance in 1866, when the property operated as Westchester House, before the Occidental name emerged during the following decade. The result is a hotel where successive lodging houses, political gatherings and nineteenth-century building campaigns give contemporary Sohotel a direct physical relationship with more than two centuries of Bowery hospitality.

What you should know about Sohotel.

Sohotel is best known for the remarkable political and social chapter of its predecessor, The Occidental, which became headquarters for Tammany Hall power broker Timothy D. Big Tim” Sullivan from 1900 until 1913, placing the hotel inside the political machine, prizefighting culture and theatrical economy of turn-of-the-century New York. Sullivan combined careers as a state senator, ward boss, theatrical impresario, real-estate operator, saloon owner and promoter of illegal prizefights, while dinners at The Occidental brought political and sporting figures including future New York governor Al Smith and heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan into the same Broome Street rooms. The hotel's bar became famous for an enormous ceiling painting depicting nude bathers, a composition whose reputation traveled far beyond the Bowery and added visual performance to Sullivan's already theatrical headquarters. Later incarnations included the Pioneer Hotel before the property emerged as Sohotel, with its current 98-room scale preserving the intimacy of a building assembled from multiple nineteenth-century structures. Big Tim Sullivan's political machine, Al Smith's ascent to the governorship, John L. Sullivan's prizefighting celebrity and the Occidental barroom's celebrated painted ceiling give the property a social history unusually entangled with the personalities and entertainments of old New York.

Randolph Beer developed another chapter inside the Sohotel complex through a 60-seat tavern whose material style drew directly from American industrial salvage, including Ford Model T headlights and booths constructed from a 50-foot Maine oak tree. A 100-year-old Kentucky tobacco barn supplied planks for Randolph Beer's bar, while reclaimed Dumbo sidewalk pavers formed its countertop and 48 custom tap lines were engineered to serve different beer styles at appropriate temperatures. Chef Ivy Stark later connected Casa Bocado to a culinary career encompassing Dos Caminos, Rosa Mexicano and El Toro Blanco, bringing her specialization in Mexican cooking into one of the hotel's street-level restaurant spaces. Together, Randolph Beer, Ivy Stark, Casa Bocado and Piacere extended Sohotel beyond accommodation through independently characterized dining rooms whose reclaimed materials, Mexican cooking and brick-oven Italian program reinforced the property's relationship with the restaurants and nightlife of its immediate downtown setting.

How to fold Sohotel into your trip.

Sohotel works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing immigration, domestic culture and contemporary art through the streets surrounding Bowery and Broome Street.

Begin at Tenement Museum, where 97 Orchard Street was constructed in 1863 with 22 three-room apartments measuring 325 square feet each and subsequently housed an estimated 7,000 people from more than 20 nations before its residential occupation ended in 1935; Ruth Abram and Anita Jacobson founded the museum in 1988 after discovering upper floors that had remained shuttered for more than half a century. Continue to Merchant's House Museum, where hatter and property developer Joseph Brewster completed a late-Federal and Greek Revival row house in 1832 before hardware merchant Seabury Tredwell purchased it three years later, beginning almost a century of family occupancy that preserved more than 3,000 possessions including furniture, clothing, photographs and decorative arts. Conclude at New Museum, whose Bowery presence brought Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA's stacked gallery architecture into the corridor before OMA partner Shohei Shigematsu led the institution's subsequent expansion, extending the neighborhood's creative chronology into another generation of international architectural authorship. The progression moves from the immigrant households of Orchard Street through the remarkably intact Tredwell domestic world into contemporary art on Bowery, revealing the layers of migration, private life and cultural reinvention surrounding Sohotel.

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