The largest suite in America and, at $75,000 a night, the world’s most expensive, The Mark’s new penthouse suite is easily the most extravagant hotel accommodation in all of Manhattan
BY JOHN O’CEALLAIGH SEPTEMBER 28, 2015 11:32
When the first residents arrive at the newly opened five-bedroom penthouse suite at The Mark in Manhattan, it’s fair to say they will be the most valued (and valuable) hotel guests in all of New York City. Occupying some 12,000 sq ft and the entire 16th and 17th floors of an Upper East Side landmark building, this isn’t just America’s largest suite; at $75,000 (£48,250) a night, it’s also the most expensive.
That hotel rooms can be so costly seems incomprehensible and in global listings of the world’s most expensive hotel suites only one other suite comes close: Geneva’s President Wilson Royal Penthouse, which sells for about £40,000 a night. It might make things slightly easier to think of this space as a billionaire bolt-hole in one of the world’s priciest cities – and that is, in fact, what it was originally meant to be. When The Mark opened in 2009 the penthouse was advertised for sale as a $60 million home. A buyer was never found and the space languished unused for years until the decision was made to transform it into one of the world’s most extravagant hotel rooms.
Guests enter the penthouse directly from one of the three elevators that service the suite and they should be impressed from the moment their feet touch down on the white oak floor. An atrium opens to the main living room, also known as the Grand Ballroom due to its 26ft-high ceilings, and It’s here that hotel guests’ friends might gather should they pop round for a cocktail, before a chat by the oversized fireplace or a sing-song at the grand piano.
The dining room accommodates up to 24 people, and an adjacent kitchen laden with Miele and Gaggenau appliances is as well equipped as that of a high-end restaurant. (Of course residents may not even enter that room, and certainly aren’t expected to use the facilities themselves, but these high-level specifications will likely be appreciated by whoever is hired to cook for them.)
Three-Michelin-starred Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who oversees The Mark’s ground-floor restaurant, is one of the high-profile chefs who can be enlisted to prepare a private dinner should the penthouse’s inhabitants fancy an evening in. Whether they lounge in the library or retire to bed, every piece of furniture is made to the specification of French interior designer Jacques Grange and is unique.
Bigger than many New York apartments, the master bedroom features its own sitting room with free-standing fireplace and two sprawling dressing areas with walk-in wardrobes decorated in what the hotel poetically calls “a mint sea foam” green. The bathroom has heated floors and an infinity bathtub. (Surprisingly, however, two of the then-unfurnished bedrooms I saw when I toured the suite last month were so sparse and squat I initially mistook them for utility rooms.)
Even the most demanding traveller will be impressed by the 2,400 sq ft rooftop terrace, however, where one of the suite’s biggest selling points can really be appreciated. Beyond the rooftop gardens and patios that crown the surrounding apartment blocks, the views stretch to central Manhattan. The cap of the Chrysler Building and the $55,000-a-night Ty Warner penthouse in the I M Pei-designed Four Seasons New York (previously the city’s most expensive hotel room) are visible to the south; Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art stand to the west. It’s a spectacular panorama.
The Mark expects the suite to attract Middle Eastern and Asian guests primarily, and should those visitors have other requests the hotel says “it’s a given” that they’ll be accommodated (with the usual luxury-travel industry caveat that they must be legal and moral). If at midnight someone needs a suit from nearby department store Bergdorf Goodman, it can be arranged; or if you need to have a work out in situ, a private gym can be installed and a personal trainer made available for one-to-one fitness sessions. To explore beyond the hotel’s periphery, a car of the guests’ choice will be at their exclusive disposal for the duration of their stay.
Grandiose gestures, but when your guests are spending more to stay with you than any other hotel customers in the country, it pays handsomely to ensure they’re completely satisfied.
John O’Ceallaigh is the Telegraph’s digital luxury travel editor
