There is a similar feel at The Greenwich Hotel perhaps the crown jewel of the BD Hotels portfolio – their only true five-star property and known locally as the ‘Robert De Niro Hotel’ after the pair’s Oscar-winning partner. For years, TriBeCa’s most famous resident held the parcel at the corner of Greenwich and North Moore with hopes of building his dream hotel. “I talked to everybody in town, and based on what I wanted to do, the same two names kept coming up. Ira and Richard,” says De Niro.

The Greenwich may have been a celebrity’s passion project, but the stakes were high – this was serious, group-up development. Each of the 75 rooms and 13 suites is unique, and incredibly well appointed. David Rockwell designed the project to De Niro’s personal taste, which he defines as ‘masculinity and comfort, executed with meticulous, refined craftsmanship.'”It was a really good, collaborative project,” says Rockwell. “Bob (De Niro) wanted the hotel to fit into the fabric of TriBeCa, so we started looking at brick treatments, among other elements. Ira thought that we could make a real design statement with the masonry, and really drove that investigation,” says Rockwell. In the end, De Niro got his dream hotel, and New York got another cult favorite, frequented by a well-heeled, often celebrity clientele who are particularly enamored of the considerably oversized speciality suites, “which De Niro was right about creating”, says Drukier.

Excerpt from Wallpaper*, January 2012