The famous airport terminal designed by Eero Saarinen in 1962 for Trans-World Airlines is alive once again thanks to hotelier MCR Development and our collective fetish for mid-century modern design. Check out this slideshow showing that the hotel is as seductive as the renderings.
The TWA Hotel at JFK opened its doors on May 15 following a two-year $265-million restoration and renovation project orchestrated by architects Beyer Blinder Belle and Lubrano Ciavarra. Travelers will be able to stay in one of 483 rooms and 22 suites distributed throughout the building’s two iconic, six-story wings, some of them looking to the runways through giant 4.5-inch-thick glass panels that are claimed to fully isolate guests from the airport noise.
The hotel rooms–each with an obligatory Womb Chair and Tulip table designed by Saarinen, plus a classic 1950s rotary phone that most millennials won’t know how to use anymore–were designed by New York-based architecture firm Stonehill Taylor, which also created the public interior spaces and the Connie airplane bar. The latter includes a fully restored Lockheed Constellation airplane. Each room starts at $249 per night, with a shorter 4-hour stay rate of $140 in case you want to take a short rest before your plane leaves.You don’t have to stay in the hotel to enjoy it, though: It also has a public, 10,000-square-foot observation deck with an infinity pool and a 40,000-square-foot event space, plus six restaurants and five additional bars that anyone can use, including the Paris Cafe–a restaurant headed by Michelin-star chef Jean-Georges that honors the name of the original terminal’s restaurant.
I don’t know about you, but it sounds like my next stay in New York may not include New York City at all.
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