Kit Kemp's conviction that a hotel room should feel like the inside of a very particular mind — curious, layered, unafraid of colour — finds perhaps its most fully realised expression in The Whitby Hotel, which opened on West 56th Street in 2017 as Firmdale's first purpose-built New York property. The facade, designed by Stephen Jacobs Group, steps back in a series of limestone-clad setbacks that nod to Manhattan's Midtown commercial vernacular while the steel-grid windows running floor to ceiling give each room the generous light of a proper loft. Forty-five floors compressed into an elegant mid-rise, housing 86 rooms and suites. Inside, Kemp's interiors deploy her signature technique of controlled collision: Mughal-arched headboards upholstered in scarlet block-print fabric against grey grasscloth walls, ochre silk wallcovering warmed by chinoiserie embroidery on lacquered navy, every room furnished as though assembled from a lifetime of obsessive collecting rather than a purchase order. The dining room gathers mismatched upholstered chairs — floral, geometric, shell-backed — beneath a tiered brass chandelier hung with frosted glass shades, walls lined with blue-and-white transferware plates above a marble pediment. At the bar, dozens of wicker baskets suspended from a steel grid overhead create an installation that functions as both ceiling and provocation, marble-top lattice stools and red leather lounge chairs arranged beneath. The cumulative effect is closer to a well-edited private house than any conventional idea of a New York hotel.

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