Nine Orchard is the S. Jarmulowsky Bank Building, twelve storeys that Rouse & Goldstone designed for the corner of Canal and Orchard and that went up in 1911 and 1912 for Sender Jarmulowsky, who had sold steamship tickets to the neighbourhood's Jewish immigrants and kept their savings since 1873. The bank traded from a two-storey banking hall behind the corner door, manufacturing lofts filled the floors above, and a domed tempietto crowned the rounded corner. Jarmulowsky died within weeks of the opening, the state closed the bank in 1917, and the tempietto came down in the early 1990s. The building was landmarked in 2009, a replica tempietto, eagles and all, was hoisted on to the roof in 2017 and finished in early 2020, and the hotel opened in June 2022.
There are 113 rooms on the floors above the banking hall, and they are where the building goes quiet: restored mouldings, BDDW headboards and lamps and tall windows. Every room has an Ojas speaker tuned to four New York stations put together by Devon Turnbull and DJ Stretch Armstrong. Sizes run from the 230 sq ft (21 m²) Studio Queen to the 1,200 sq ft (111 m²) Two Bedroom Terrace Suite, and the Terrace Suites add a private terrace to their skyline views. The Corner Kings are the ones to want, built round the curve of three windows in the bank's rounded corner.
What makes it the boutique choice is how much building you get around so few rooms. The Swan Room fills the old banking hall: tall arched windows, an ornamental ceiling rehabilitated from the 1912 drawings, pink Tennessee and Botticino marble, a living room by day and martinis, oysters and caviar at night. Corner Bar, an all-day tavern with a 40-seat bar, holds the Allen Street corner in a six-storey wing built beside the bank, there is a guests' lounge with a fireplace on the second floor, and the hotel runs talks and jazz nights as 9O Presents. Outside are Chinatown and the old Jewish Lower East Side, with the Eldridge Street Synagogue that Jarmulowsky helped build three minutes away.
The trade is space and distance. The cheapest rooms are tight for two people with luggage, there is a gym but no spa or pool, and the Swan Room is a public bar that fills with reservations, so a room key does not get you a table. Times Square is 4.8 km away, a ride on the F train rather than a walk. Book it if you know New York already, want to eat your way through downtown and care more about the building than the floor area. A first trip built around Midtown belongs elsewhere.
