Why you should experience The Langham, Fifth Avenue in New York, NY.
The Langham, New York, 5th Avenue is a polished luxury hotel where Midtown's skyscraper ambition, contemporary art culture, 5th Avenue prestige and cosmopolitan refinement converge within a modern tower conceived to make its own contribution to the Manhattan skyline.
Set along 5th Avenue near West 36th Street and just steps from the Empire State Building, the hotel occupies the lower floors of 400 5th Avenue, a 2010 tower designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates with a limestone base and distinctive illuminated crown. The property's cultural character centers on New York painter Alex Katz, whose two grand oil paintings behind reception anchor a collection of ten original works commissioned for spaces throughout the hotel. That relationship carries contemporary New York art into a building whose architects deliberately treated its crown and vertical profile as contributions to 5th Avenue's architectural presence. The result is a hotel where Gwathmey Siegel's skyscraper architecture and Katz's unmistakable figurative language give a relatively young 5th Avenue address a character rooted in two generations of New York creative authorship.
What you should know about The Langham.
The Langham, New York, 5th Avenue is best known for opening on November 1, 2010 as The Setai Fifth Avenue inside 400 5th Avenue, a 57-story, 632-foot tower designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects and developed by Bizzi & Partners Development. The hotel initially operated under Capella Hotel Group before Hong Kong-based Great Eagle Holdings acquired it for $229 million in 2012, transferred management to Langham Hospitality Group and reopened it as Langham Place, 5th Avenue in May 2013, followed by its current The Langham, New York, 5th Avenue character in December 2017. Gwathmey Siegel conceived the tower with an 11-story limestone base and gleaming crown intended to establish a distinct skyline presence, while the hotel occupies the lower portion of a building whose vertical composition rises dramatically above 5th Avenue. Contemporary art became another defining element through ten original works by Alex Katz, beginning with two enormous oil paintings behind reception and continuing through the property, with reproductions extending the collection into guest corridors. The sequence from Gwathmey Siegel's final generation of New York architecture through a $229 million acquisition, three hospitality identities and an unusually concentrated Alex Katz collection gives the hotel a factual history built around architecture, international ownership and contemporary American art.
Ai Fiori established a parallel creative character when it opened with the original hotel in 2010 under chef Michael White and Altamarea Group, translating the cuisines of the French and Italian Rivieras into one of Midtown's defining contemporary dining rooms. Its Italian name means “among the flowers,” while the culinary style developed around handmade pasta, seafood and regional Mediterranean traditions, eventually earning sustained critical recognition and establishing the restaurant independently from the hotel surrounding it. Current dishes include Atlantic fluke with American sturgeon caviar and Meyer lemon, trofie nero with Ligurian crustacean ragù, scallop and cuttlefish, and hand-cut beef tartare, preserving the coastal French and Italian structure established at its debut. Ai Fiori, Alex Katz and Gwathmey Siegel consequently provide three unusually distinct forms of authorship within the same address, allowing cuisine, painting and architecture to define The Langham's Fifth Avenue character across disciplines.
How to fold The Langham into your trip.
The Langham, New York, 5th Avenue works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing the architecture, collecting culture and decorative ambition that shaped this stretch of Midtown.
Begin at The Morgan Library & Museum, where J. Pierpont Morgan commissioned Charles Follen McKim to create his private library, completed in 1906 as an Italian Renaissance-inspired setting for rare manuscripts, drawings and books before the institution opened to the public in 1924 under Morgan's son. Continue to New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, where Carrère and Hastings completed their Beaux-Arts composition in 1911 after years of construction, placing grand reading rooms, murals, marble and vast research collections within one of 5th Avenue's defining cultural buildings. Conclude at Empire State Building, where Shreve, Lamb & Harmon's 102-story tower rose with astonishing speed before opening on May 1, 1931, establishing the Art Deco silhouette that still dominates views from this section of 5th Avenue. The progression moves from McKim's intensely personal library through Carrère and Hastings's institutional grandeur into the skyscraper ambition that reshaped Manhattan, providing the architectural continuum against which Gwathmey Siegel conceived 400 5th Avenue nearly a century later.
Where your story begins.
Foresyte Travel reveals places that feel extraordinary long before you arrive.
Experience premium editorial crafted for luxury travelers.
