Dream Downtown

Be sure to pack your totem: Staying at the latest property from hotel wunderkind Vikram Chatwal may make you wonder if you’re in a dream within a Dream. The expansive, tree-shaded lobby, furnished with curvy, metallic-lizard banquettes, and presided over by a DJ nightly, provides an overhead view of swimmers doing laps in the glass-bottomed pool on the terrace above. Housed in the former annex of the New York Maritime Union (now the adjacent Maritime Hotel), the surreal building is riddled with round windows. In the upper-floor rooms, these frame elements of the Manhattan skyline, such as the Empire State Building, in intriguing ways and are picked up by circular mirrors and wallpaper motifs. Quarters combine classic elements (white chesterfield chairs or sofas, Tivoli radios, Turkish rugs) with futuristic touches like shiny steel bathtubs in some rooms.