The building, the bar, and Cafe Zaffri genuinely live up to the opening buzz. The hype around the club part is more mixed. Members get the real experience, and overnight guests get a version of it, but not the full depth. Book with that expectation and you will not feel oversold.
Most coverage focuses on the public rooms, but the real secret is the in-house library on an upper floor, a small reading room quietly stocked with first editions and private club volumes the staff will pull down if you ask. Almost no guests know to request it.
The building itself is the anchor. Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt, daughter of William Henry, funded the original Margaret Louisa Home in 1891 as philanthropy for self-sufficient Protestant women, and the nine-story structure still carries the original bones: high ceilings, ornate stonework, and window sightlines onto Union Square. The restoration kept the landmark facade and layered the interiors with Gilded Age references, and staying here is the closest you can get to sleeping inside a Wharton novel.
The public restaurant is run by Jennifer and Nicole Vitagliano, executive chef Mary Attea, and pastry chef Camari Mick, the same team behind Raf's and the Musket Room. Attea's menu pulls from her Lebanese roots into a modern Levantine format, and within weeks of opening, Cafe Zaffri became one of the hardest reservations in the neighborhood. Hotel guests can walk downstairs without a booking, which is reason enough to stay.
Overnight guests get access to the upper-floor members' spaces that outsiders cannot buy their way into: the lounge, the raw bar, the rooftop garden and terrace, the gym, and the late-night bar. It is the same workaround the London property runs, and it is the core selling proposition. You book a room for a night, and for 24 hours you get the club without the five-figure initiation.
Seventy-seven rooms in 1891 Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt landmark. Mayfair private-club plus hotel hybrid. Service skews to members during events; rooms feel secondary at peak hours.
No published Instagram signal but 80,000 followers and the London-Twenty Two private-club brand pull Mayfair-loyalist travellers and Vanderbilt-landmark-curious heritage readers. Members get fuller experience than overnight guests.
Seventy-seven rooms span Deluxe King (park-facing, best entry), 19 suites with most-generous ceiling heights, rooftop penthouse flagship. Wallpaper aesthetic varies room-to-room: bold across all.
At $$$$$ in Chelsea, Twenty Two competes with St. Regis and Soho House. Wins on first-Manhattan-real-glamour-opening-in-years and Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt landmark, not on Marriott Bonvoy.
When the Twenty Two opened its first New York outpost at the end of 2024, the waitlist for membership was already longer than the guest list. The London hotel brand took over the old Margaret Louisa Home, a nine-story landmark at 16 East 16th Street that heiress Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt commissioned in 1891 as a boarding house for respectable working women, and turned it into 78 rooms, a private members' club, a Levantine ground-floor restaurant, and a rooftop garden with skyscraper views.
The design leans hard into Gilded Age flourishes crossed with the eclectic, fashion-forward sensibility the London property became known for: marble bathrooms, mohair blankets, velvet banquettes, and wallpaper loud enough to argue with. The result is the first real glamour-hotel opening Manhattan has had in years, and the booking pressure reflects it. 80,000 Instagram followers means the rooms get picked off as soon as they drop.
Late April–early May beats Met Gala. First two weeks of September beat UNGA. Anything Sep–Dec needs 60–90 days of lead time.
Signal stable — composite holding within ±2 points over 17 days (currently 64). No single dimension moved more than the rest.
File closes at VERY HIGH. Book direct two months out for Fashion Week and UN General Assembly. Skip if you need points; no loyalty program clears the rate here.