Solid returns: New York’s Wall Street Hotel

This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to New York

In a city where cool is fleeting and floorspace even more precious, the choice of where to stay is never truly made — and so on my most recent trip to Manhattan, surprising even myself, I turn downtown to Wall Street. Surely, this is the perfect location for the discerning FT reader; I am excited to stay in the hub of the old financial quarter.

The Wall Street Hotel opened in 2022 and is already developing a name. It’s new and cool, a reputation confirmed by my local friends, who trade restaurant tips like gold futures and are happy to come and meet me here.

Like many intersections in this part of town, the corner of Water and Wall Street is a historic spot. A polished plaque on the hotel greets me, which notes that the Buttonwood Agreement was signed in this exact place, establishing in 1792 what is now the New York Stock Exchange.

The exchange began at the Tontine Coffee House, one of the city’s most important early commerce hubs, known to be a rowdy and uncouth place where men came to buy, sell, underwrite, gamble and trade. What replaces it is an imposing, 14-floor Beaux Arts building built in 1901 that has been many things: an office building, a mother-of-pearl importer, an antique emporium and, now, a boutique hotel. Strangely, it looks as if a hotel has been here this whole time.

My question, upon entering its creamy, marble-filled lobby, is whether this Wall Street Hotel will stand up to its storied location and synonymous name.

Rooms

My King room is plush and (relatively) spacious, decorated with expensive discretion, and featuring the five-star basics: Frette linens, Nespresso machine and Le Labo toiletries. I would note the shower is the most powerful I have ever experienced, simultaneously therapeutic and lightly shocking. You may want to identify your nearest exit before operation.

Equally startling is the substantial drinks trolley by the window. Were you to film a “protagonist drains the mini bar” montage here, it would take an entire weekend. I found I could resist the half-pint bottles of bourbon, Scotch and tequila and even the oyster shucker — but the sheer loucheness forced a devil-may-care attitude to the cashew jar.

Bar

Only slightly more lavishly stocked than my bedroom is Lounge on Pearl, a grand room with double-height windows, animal print sofas and a central horseshoe bar that commands you in.

My 5.30pm cocktail partner is en route to a CEO-stuffed formal dinner, stopping by just to drop some enriching gossip (very Wall Street). The cocktails are excellent, but, according to my drinking companion, the charming mural of great Manhattan buildings that surrounds us is insufficiently to scale. This also displeases the otherwise accommodating barman, and they spend some time sniffily discussing how it should look if properly drawn. This doesn’t tell me anything about what to do with my bond holdings.

More promisingly, Tontine, a rooftop bar named for the original coffee house, opens the night I leave. Drinking on rooftops in New York is one of the finest ways humanity has evolved to waste time. I am told by sources who cannot be named that this Tontine is already currency its namesake would respect.

Location

We are just two blocks from the East River and another few from The Seaport District, a historic cobbled neighbourhood recently rebranded from South Street Seaport. It is now a gentrified leisureplex with myriad shops, a museum, rooftop bars, a music venue on the pier and a branch of Manhattan’s great bookshop McNally Jackson (two delightful rickety floors of an 1811 merchant row building, where you can read in a leather chair while sipping a matcha latte). As of now, The Seaport has a vaguely Disneyfied feel; it doesn’t yet sit comfortably alongside the rowdy construction sites, Irish pubs, taco trucks and dry cleaners that service the working Joes of the Financial District of yore. If I were a tourist, I might be confused.

Restaurant

Breakfast in La Marchande is less conducive to business than Lounge on Pearl: the tables are insider-trading close, and before the coffee arrives I feel I know too much about everyone there for the SEC’s comfort. 

To this untrained eye, the restaurant needs a slightly bigger staff; the waiters have that shifty look of “don’t make eye contact, or someone else will complain”. A man in front of me is, in fact, complaining. A woman doesn’t want to be seated where she is seated. I get the sense that people don’t feel the service at this moment reflects their $900 a night room rate. The eggs, however, are very well cooked.

My neighbour, whose muesli I am in danger of inhaling, tells her breakfast date that her room is small, but the bar is great. Her tone (correctly) suggests that this is an acceptable compromise. Everyone agrees that being a few blocks from the office is key to successful work travel.

Meanwhile, a table of men to my right are raging about a deal that fell apart over drinks last night. No one knows what went wrong, but the speculation will last through steak and eggs. 

“Tim sweats sin,” I hear one say.

“Kelly taped the whole of it,” says another.

“Kelly who?”

“Kelly was THERE?”

“Kelly jumped in the car.” There are guffaws. There are high fives.

The conversation feels like an immersive Wall Street experience presented by Oliver Stone. I am elated.

If you know Kelly, can you have her call me? I want to talk to her about a sequel.

At a glance

• Good for: Eavesdropping on would-be Jordan Belforts. Highly credible bars. A properly comfortable high-end hotel that works as it should.

• Not so good for: Serenity and peace. Wall Street is reinventing itself, but the work is very much in progress. If you want trees and shops, you are in the wrong bit of town 

• Number of rooms and suites: 180

• Rates: The cheapest Queen rooms range from $500 on a sweaty July Sunday to $1,000 for Christmas shopping in December

• Address: 88 Wall St, New York, NY 10005

• Website; Directions

Janine Gibson was a guest of The Wall Street Hotel

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