Nine Orchard

The Jarmulowsky Bank put up its building at Orchard and Canal in 1912, and two years later, when the First World War broke out, a run on the bank finished it. The building fared better, though not entirely: a renovation in 1990 took the tempietto off its roof, a ring of columns under a dome with carved eagles round its base. For the hotel, restorers went back to the 1912 drawings and the archive photographs and built it again, clocks included, so the dome is back above the fire escapes of Orchard Street. The rooms below wear their history more lightly: the original mouldings, tall steel-framed windows hung with olive velvet, and a mustard armchair on a bent chrome frame, the one thing in sight making no claim to 1912.

Recommended for grown-ups who want downtown Manhattan on foot and can do without a pool or a spa, since there is neither. Chinatown starts at the door, and Dimes Square, with its restaurants and natural wine bars, is within ten minutes' walk. Corner Bar, downstairs, runs from breakfast to a nightcap on bistro dishes and American wine, and will send them up to the room. Guests also have a lounge of their own on the second floor, the East Room. The best of it is the Swan Room, in the old teller hall: martinis and small plates in the booths, under the vaulted ceiling and the arched windows. The hotel opened in 2022, and has already lasted longer in the building than the bank did.