An Ocean Cruise in Manhattan

By John Skow

Restless souls forever in search of the cutting edge but never quite sure they have found it are directed to Manhattan's new Royalton Hotel, in the theater district. At least for now, the cutting edge is here. Bring Band-Aids.

If you don't believe it, watch the big man in the Boer War trench coat. He feels a little out of place in the snazzy Royalton lobby because everybody else there is 44-going-on-22, wearing University of Sofia sweat shirts and $1,250 gazelle-skin bomber jackets. He thinks he would feel less conspicuous sitting down, but that is not nearly so simple as it sounds. Most of the furniture in the block-long lobby, which resembles the grand saloon of a beached ocean liner from some troubled dream, is pretty aggressive stuff. Near at hand, for instance, a pair of sharp, stainless-steel horns, curled forward like those of a fighting bull, rise improbably from the top rear edge of a medium-size white canvas cube. This contraption is placed at a chess table -- chess is a design element here -- and is evidently a sitting machine, a chair.

The big geezer, who used to stay at the Royalton when it was a comfortable dump with furniture that couldn't fight back, now makes a mistake. As he sits, he tries to work too close to the bull. He swings his legs past the right horn, one of the chair's arms, and sinks down. A hideous ripping sound arrests all conversation. Does someone say, "Oh, the poor man"? Do paramedics dressed as bellboys come running with plasma and a stretcher?

More to the point, is the new Royalton really suitable for out-of-towners? The old Royalton sheltered Third World businessmen, flight crews from obscure airlines, unglamorous theater folk, out-of-town magazine writers, and several old ladies who looked like great aunts. The stains on the wallpaper got to be old friends. If you came in past 11:30 p.m., you found the door locked. Eventually, the night porter would answer the bell, not exactly in his bathrobe but looking the way your girlfriend's father used to when you brought her home late. If your step was wobbly on these occasions, the porter looked concerned. Rates passed for cheap in midtown -- $80 for a small suite -- and if you had not checked in for a while, the desk clerk asked after your health.

Then, a couple of years ago, the Royalton stopped answering its phone. Crazy stories circulated, all true. There were new owners, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, the Merry-Andrews who ran the wildly successful disco Studio 54 a decade before (and shared a cell in federal prison for evading taxes on the disco's income). To reinvent everything from door knobs to plumbing, they hired Philippe Starck, a Euro-glitz wild man usually described as a French biker-designer (he is French, rides a big motorcycle and designs things).

Starck spent $10 million, so it is claimed, and the visitor in the torn trench coat has to admit that what Schrager and Rubell got for this bundle is momentarily, at any rate, the least boring public building in Manhattan. Some of it works; some of it doesn't; that is what is interesting. The chairs are, perhaps, too lively. Not just the ones that stab you -- also the ones made of mahogany laminate that have two normal legs on the front but only one stainless-steel leg at the rear, so that anyone who tilts backward rolls over abruptly, heels in the air.

The designer's best bold stroke was to hollow out the Royalton's long, block-through, columned lobby and bring it alive. People sit here and talk nonsense to one another, order tea -- a liquor license is still to come -- wait for somebody to tilt a chair back, argue about what Starck did right and wrong. (Right: a bar, made of dark marble, with a lovely, sinuous stainless-steel footrest, and a thin strip of glowing blue glass set into the top. Wrong: tacky purple ropes with tassels, holding up enormous mirrors.)

A trip to the men's room is Niagaral; the urinal is a huge stainless-steel waterfall (no compensating astonishment for women). A newcomer can be sent to find a tiny round bar that might seat ten people, hidden near the entrance. Finding it is not easy, to the satisfaction of Rubell and Schrager. They insisted that their builder hide the door. "Discreet is in," says Rubell, 46. "If you don't know where it is," observes Schrager, 42, "you wouldn't be comfortable there. Our guests will be a certain sort of people who will feel right here." The Royalton is the second Manhattan hotel bought by the pair, with two other partners. The first, Morgans, on Madison Avenue, is so discreet that no name appears outside, and cab drivers have to intuit its location. They have plans for two more, including the Barbizon, once a stately hotel for women only, which they intend to turn into an "urban spa."

Bring money. Breakfast for two, without champagne, can run to $50 or $60. That said, service is friendly, partly, say Rubell and Schrager, because none of the staff have worked in a hotel before. Sizable rooms are $190 and up, to $1,200 for a large penthouse. Fresh flowers are everywhere. Bathrooms are glass and gray slate with big round tubs. There are fireplaces in most of the bedrooms. No pictures of sailboats and sunsets; in fact, no art at all, except for a single Paul Klee or Joan Miro postcard, mincingly placed behind a candle holder.

Just a minute . . . (Room service has arrived with lox, bagel and cream cheese. Don't look at the bill, just sign it.) Um, yes. Beer in the fridge. The stereo is playing. It is easy to forget that this ocean liner is beached in New York City. Or that it is beached at all; a curious rocking motion has commenced . . .