An upscale hotel featuring guest rooms with book themes opened August 30 at Madison Avenue and 41st Street in New York City. Called the Library Hotel, it is operated by Luxe Worldwide Hotels, a Los Angeles–based company that strives to provide “a more intimate and personal experience” in its 200 facilities and resorts throughout the world.
Each of the 10 guestroom floors is dedicated to one of the 10 Dewey Decimal classifications. The six rooms on each floor are stocked with books and art related to a topic within the Dewey class; for example, there is a dinosaur room on the Math and Science floor, an ethics room on the Philosophy floor, and a libraries room on the General Knowledge floor.
Owner Henry Kallan said he got the idea from the hotel’s location. “I looked out onto Madison Avenue and saw the New York Public Library from the hotel. I then went three blocks down and saw the Pierpoint Morgan Library. So I said I’d call it the Library Hotel,” Kallan said in a May 31 interview with Hotel Interactive, an industry news source. “Then I thought of what themes would match that idea. The architect’s son, Jordan Jacobs, was a set designer. He crystallized the idea perfectly.”
Posted September 4, 2000.