Passersby are taken with the Warren Street Hotel’s bright blue façade, capped in a complementary sunny yellow shade settled upon during the depths of the pandemic as an antidote to those grim times.
The 69-room property is the latest addition to the Firmdale Hotels portfolio, and its cofounder and creative director Kit Kemp remembers when her husband Tim, her partner in the business, asked her what color they should paint the outside of the building. “Everything was rather sad at that point,” Kemp recalls, “so we thought, let’s do it in the brightest blue, so it’s always going to feel summery and optimistic.”
Warren Street Hotel is the third Firmdale outpost in New York (there are eight in London), and like all the brand’s properties, its design was led by the London-based Kemp’s eponymous studio, featuring the handiwork of her daughters Minnie and Willow, too.
A black-veined marble sculpture from Tony Cragg juxtaposes Sanna Gateja’s beaded collage in the Warren Street Hotel lobby
Warren Street is an evolution of the Firmdale brand, where Kemp—known for her expertise at layering colors and patterns in a meticulous and thoughtful way—is more keen on breaking the rules when it comes to scale and balance. “I’m always looking at my properties,” she adds. “They’re never over. To me, it’s like a moving treasure box. You are forever pushing it forward, and the exciting thing is to do it while it’s still open.” Guests have come to appreciate the always-transforming hotel canvas, too. “They like to come back and see that something has changed,” she says.
Guestrooms are bathed in natural light from floor-to-ceiling windows
Joining the Crosby Street Hotel in Soho and the Whitby Hotel in Midtown, the Warren Street Hotel, a new-build courtesy of local firm Stonehill Taylor, is in Tribeca, a Manhattan neighborhood that Kemp likens “to a breath of fresh air” given its proximity to the Hudson River, and one she is drawn to because of its past as the city’s textile epicenter in the 19th century.
In signature Kemp fashion, the property is loaded with character, a riot of layered patterns and jubilant hues bolstered by Kemp’s deep relationships with artists and craftspeople. In fact, there are nearly 1,000 pieces on display throughout. Consider the imposing black-veined marble sculpture from Tony Cragg juxtaposed with Sanaa Gateja’s beaded collage in the lobby. The calming drawing room, complete with a library and game tables, features an old cupboard spruced up by Tess Newall and the intricate figures of historic explorers rendered in wood by Henry Neville Wood. Even the elevator features an artwork spun from a collection of vintage starched children’s collars. “I do try and create little stories within the hotel,” Kemp points out.
She is always on the prowl for unusual finds, attracted to 1930s beaded bags, once paired with gowns, “that are exquisite and shouldn’t be thrown away or put in a drawer. You have to remember them.” Flea market silk skeins still tethered to cardboard are another of Kemp’s favorite discoveries. “I will always frame those because they are things of beauty,” she adds.
Gareth Devonald Smith’s 20-foot-long sculpture is suspended over the bar in the Warren Street Bar & Restaurant
Kemp is also a curator, commissioning talents to come up with eye-catching works. Gareth Devonald Smith, for example, conceived the crescent-shaped chandelier at the entry and the chunky 20-foot-long sculpture suspended in the Warren Street Bar & Restaurant, while Cristián Mohaded’s woven basket towers adorn the lobby and his sculptural crocodile bench sits opposite the elevators. Longtime collaborator Martha Freud, whose ceramic works grace the Whitby, crafted pots nestled into orange nooks in the Orangery, the private dining space inspired by British craft.
With each of her projects, Kemp takes a democratic approach to art, seeking out maybe “one famous sculpture with a knockout look, but then we’ll put it beside a work by someone who’s only just finished art college. That makes it lively,” she explains.
Just past the entry, one of Kemp’s own designs, the zigzag motif she dreamed up as a fabric and wallpaper for Christopher Farr that launched in 2023, is a dramatic backdrop greeting guests at the reception desk. “When I see that up there, it makes me want to dance because it is bold,” she says. “It’s out there, but it works,” complementing the vivacious palette of orange, green, blue, and yellow.
Wallpaper depicts plant life in the three-bedroom Songbird suite
Her knack for wrapping walls in textiles is reflected in the Warren Street Hotel’s guestrooms. Often, she lines these retreats with fabrics “because it gives a tailored, couture feeling to the room,” Kemp notes. Surrounding guests in such soft materials, designing playful, large-scale headboards, and adding art to the bathroom that makes them smile are ways that Kemp whimsically morphs a mere hotel stay “into an adventure,” as she puts it.
Amid all this creativity, the rarest sights at the property are undoubtedly those guestrooms boasting fully landscaped gardens. They are “a defining feature of the hotel,” says Kemp, “and something which is a complete surprise.”
This article originally appeared in HD’s April 2024 issue.
