New York’s glitter and grime are cinematically displayed on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and while it has adapted over the years like any other neighborhood, its stylish, artistic legacy transcends its physical evolutions. Spanning a 26-story building located between Ludlow and Orchard Streets, the Hotel Indigo Lower East Side pays tribute to Lower Manhattan’s industrial and colorful nature with a design by locally based firm Amanda Sullivan Studio Architecture (ASSA).
“This area is being rapidly gentrified, and we wanted to capture a moment in the area’s history and create a time capsule of sorts, both for guests and for the city as a whole,” says firm principal Amanda Sullivan.
Mirroring an alleyway, the Orchard Street entrance features cobblestone floors with inset flat granite slabs, while brick walls and painted block signage welcome guests in the Ludlow Street entryway, leading to a series of tunnels outfitted with rough-cut reclaimed wood planks finished in high-gloss lacquer. Further channeling the found-object art that characterizes the neighborhood, the ground floor elevator lobby’s east wall boasts a sculptural steel gate fabricated by artist Tovey Halleck and custom chandeliers resembling old bicycle wheels.
A thoughtful integration of vibrant artwork and large murals contextualizes the Indigo brand’s signature aesthetic without being overwhelming. The “artistic centerpiece” of the hotel, for example, is a mural by Lee Quinones that hangs from the ceiling in the 14th-floor, double-height guest lobby. The Lower East Side native’s graffiti artwork depicts a series of polaroid-style snapshots of the neighborhood during the 1970s and ’80s, “glowing scenes from the past shining over the now vibrant streetfronts of the neighborhood,” Sullivan says.
Guestroom corridors feature five varying visual identities, including directional signage, room numbers, and six different types of light fixtures randomly distributed to diversify the entry experiences. Inside, the rooms—done in more than two dozen different layouts—reference street sculpture through blackened steel door handles and mirror frames, while minibars are inspired by vendor pushcarts. The motif is amplified though a functional tool bar and shelving crafted from blackened steel and wood, conveying “the sense that the space could have been decorated by a young street artist from found materials and scavenged metalwork,” Sullivan says. Individual panels from the lobby mural appear again, here on large backlit panels.
And in areas “where the architecture or other programmatic anomalies might distract,” Sullivan explains, she added simple painted block graphics throughout the property “to divert the eye to more interesting areas so that all moments in the hotel can be an opportunity to discover something.”
