The Library Hotel
New York City
Stephen B. Jacobs Group/Andi Pepper Interior Design

Narrow spaces brought to life with a bookish theme

© Bruce Buck

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

The Library is a 60-room boutique hotel that resulted from the adaptive reuse of a turn-of-the-century, 12-story office building. The very narrow footprint of the building posed a particular difficulty, allowing for only six rooms per floor, each with a different configuration. The husband-and-wife team of Jacobs and Pepper drew on their experience in working with New York City brownstone and yacht design to put every square inch of space to good use. Blending elegance with functionality, they managed to give even the most compact room a feel of luxury and space.

Carrying through with the library design concept, each floor is keyed to the Dewey Decimal system used by libraries to catalog books, with the theme of the guest corridors, rooms, and amenities corresponding to the floor’s Dewey Decimal "category" number. Social sciences are represented by the 300s, located on the third floor; "language" is represented by the 400s and is located on the fourth floor. Each guest room carries an individual theme within its floor concept. A lawyer might enjoy staying in the "law" room, where the bookshelves are loaded with law books and fiction and nonfiction books related to law.

Formal name of building:
The Library Hotel

Location:
New York City

Gross square footage:
35,000 SF

Total construction cost:
$12 million

Owner:
Henry Kallan and Jan Kalanda

Architect's firm:
Stephen B. Jacobs Group/Andi Pepper Interior Design
677 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Tel: 212.421.3712
Fax: 2.1.752.4819