Until her death in 1902, Charlotte Goodridge lived an opulent existence on lower Fifth Avenue. A Gilded Age socialite straight out of the hit HBO series depicting the period, Goodridge was famed for hosting lavish receptions and musical performances filled with a well-heeled café society crowd. The consummate party thrower told a reporter in 1894 that “[a] woman’s peculiar duty is to create the atmosphere of the home.”
After Goodridge’s death, high society moved uptown and her home was sold to Second National Bank which employed the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White to erect a five-story Italian Renaissance palazzo that opened in 1907. Flash- forward to 1978 when the Ohebshalom family buys the property to use as commercial space.
The once-boondock location at 250 Fifth Avenue now anchors the red-hot NoMad district alongside fancy hotels, private clubs, restaurants, and designer boutiques. Hotelier Alex Ohebshalom smartly decided to transform the building into a luxury hotel—adding a 24-story glass tower where Goodridge’s carriage house once stood and meticulously restoring the mansion’s brick-and-limestone façade and original terra cotta cornice.
After a decade of work, Ohebshalom has opened the Fifth Avenue Hotel—Manhattan’s newest, swankiest retreat with 153 rooms (pro tip: the suites to nab are in the “mansion”). “The Fifth is the realization of many years of dreaming and discovery,” Ohebshalom says. “We are creating a one-of-a-kind experience; it is a whimsical, transformational escape in the heart of Manhattan.”
Maximalist-to-the-max interior designer Martin Brudnizki has created a Gilded Age fantasy from the dramatic double-height lobby with marble floors, walls paneled with antique mirrors, and cabinets of curiosities filled with many forms of crystals. Behind the front desk is a large tapestry by artist Pae White titled Bugs & Drugs—look carefully for both creepy crawlers and illicit substances. The ultimate effect is “Bohemia Luxuria.”
Ohebshalom is a world traveler who has visited North Africa and southeast Asia extensively, and Brudnizki has envisioned exotic spaces that feel like you’re in the grand home of an eccentric and very rich global nomad—from pagoda-style table lamps to Murano chandeliers and photographs by William Klein, Gordon Parks, and Melvin Sokolsky. The elevators are ruched in rose-colored silk by craftsmen from Paris. Flattering night-sky ceiling lights twinkle and soft electronic music creates an escape from the loud street outside.
The suites in the mansion come with an on-call butler (also very Gilded Age) and are separated into a sitting area and bedroom by an arched sea-foam-green screen. The rich color palette— an impressionistic garden of greens, peony pinks, and buttercup yellows—surrounds whimsical touches like custom wardrobes inspired by traditional Chinese cabinets and antique inlaid side tables. If you want to live out an Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton fantasy—this is your spot.
The Fifth Avenue Hotel has quickly become a stylish destination. James Beard Award-winning chef Andrew Carmellini helms its restaurant, Café Carmellini, replete with a second-floor balcony of private tête-à-tête tables overlooking the main dining area. The Italy-meets-France menu is as decadent as theneoclassical room which features an open kitchen, blue banquettes, and two grand sculptural trees. Carmellini’s plates—presented in a way that would make Brooke Astor smile—include a sweet crab and pepper mille-feuille, rabbit cacciatore, and veal medallions all’Ortolana.
After dinner, there is the speakeasy-style Portrait Bar, a dark wood-paneled lounge with a salon-style gallery of portraits and a drink menu that nods to Ohebshalom’s world treks: Oaxacan gins, Korean sojus, and Japanese whiskys, all used perfectly by master mixologist Darryl Chan.
Ohebshalom’s hotel group is aptly named Flâneur Hospitality. A flâneur is someone who likes to idle and lounge. The poet Charles Baudelaire was often called a flâneur and the Fifth Avenue Hotel—luxuriously hidden away from the bustle of New York—is the ultimate destination for modern flâneuring. – PETER DAVIS
