In lower Manhattan, the new, 303-room Moxy Lower East Side is the fourth Moxy hotel in New York City developed by Lightstone. The property has five new dining and drinking venues by Tao Group Hospitality: Sake No Hana, a Japanese restaurant; Silver Lining, a piano lounge; The Highlight Room, a rooftop bar; The Fix, an all-day café and lobby bar; and Loosie’s, a subterranean club.
“The Lower East Side has always been iconically cool. We saw it as the next logical frontier for Moxy,” Lightstone President Mitchell Hochberg said in a statement. “People come to the neighborhood to indulge their thirst for discovery, and they’ll get that at the Moxy too—and we’ve made it accessible rather than exclusive.”
The interior designn was overseen by Michaelis Boyd and Rockwell Group and the architecture was handled by Stonehill Taylor. Michaelis Boyd and Rockwell Group took inspiration from the Bowery’s history as a hub of entertainment—from the Vauxhall Gardens and German Winter Garden of the 1800s to the vaudeville theaters and burlesque houses of the last century—while channeling the neighborhood’s present-day DNA and maintaining Moxy’s trademark whimsy.
The 303 rooms at Moxy Lower East Side have symmetrical shapes, bright hues and space-saving solutions. Rooms range from 165 to 195 square feet, including kings, executive kings, double doubles and quads. Bathrooms have rain showers with colored glass doors, lava stone sinks, and a mirror lined with Hollywood-style lighting. The hotel’s interior courtyard has a large, provocative work by English urban artist D*Face.
The Factory Loft is a hospitality suite for parties, events, meetings and social gatherings. Named for Andy Warhol’s legendary Factory studio, the suite has double-height windows and a huge outdoor terrace.
Michaelis Boyd designed the first-floor lobby as a multipurpose work and amusement space, centered around The Fix, a bar and all-day café where a variety of seating arrangements—sofas and armchairs, high-tops and café tables—enable socializing and coworking. One corner has a hanging birdcage seat. In the café area, marble-topped tables have brass tic tac toe inserts. Anthropomorphic tables feature sculptures of hipster animals, like a rock & roll sloth in a leather vest and a seven-foot bear holds a hula hoop. An adjacent table-height shuffleboard game uses pucks shaped like illicit pills. Overhead, 3D-printed pinup girls dangle from the chandeliers in cheeky, burlesque-inspired poses. Contactless check-in is available at self-service kiosks, while a staffed reception desk accommodates travelers who prefer more assistance.
Drinking and Dining
Moxy Lower East Side’s five drinking and dining establishments were developed by Tao Group Hospitality in partnership with Lightstone. “New York City is experiencing a huge renaissance right now, with locals and visitors coming to experience the city in waves,” said Noah Tepperberg, Co-CEO of Tao Group Hospitality.
The lobby-adjacent Silver Lining is a piano lounge with blue velvet banquettes. A shimmering wallcovering depicts objects associated with the history of the Bowery and specifically with Warhol’s life and career: the banana from the Velvet Underground & Nico album cover, the face of one of his muses,and lines from a poem he wrote.
Japanese restaurant Sake No Hana ca nbe accessed via two dramatically curved staircases of metal, glass, and leather flanked by large kimono-inspired tapestries. Rockwell Group took inspiration from New York’s 1980s punk scene and Japanese street culture.
Rockwell Group-designed Loosie’s is an edgy club beneath Moxy Lower East Side. Guests reach Loosie’s by heading down a mysterious alley behind the hotel, lined with graffiti by the late New York street artist Lance de los Reyes (aka Rambo), then descending several flights on a staircase. Inside there are tufted banquettes, an “exploded” disco ball chandelier, and a cage-like bar. Tepperberg partnered with Dylan Hales and Ronnie Flynn, the cofounders of Lower East Side's The Flower Shop, as creative directors for both Loosie’s and Silver Lining.
Up on the 16th floor, The Highlight Room, designed by Michaelis Boyd, is a rooftop bar that evokes a 19th-century pleasure garden with views of the city through a glass wall that spans the entire width of the room and folds back to allow access to the outdoor terrace.
Moxy Lower East Side has more than 13,000 square feet of meeting and event space. The hotel’s three meeting studios have modular furniture that can be reconfigured to turn the space into a lounge by night.