The Beekman is the Temple Court Building, an office block Silliman & Farnsworth designed for the banker Eugene Kelly and finished in 1883, the year the Brooklyn Bridge opened. It is New York's earliest surviving, essentially unaltered tall "fireproof" office building: a two-storey granite base, red brick and terracotta above, with a pair of pyramid-roofed towers on the Beekman Street front. Lawyers, architects and the Irish Free State consulate rented offices here. A change in the building code had the atrium walled in during the 1950s, the building closed in 2001, and after a three-year restoration it opened in August 2016 as a Thompson hotel, with a 51-storey residential tower behind it.
There are 287 rooms, some of them in the lower floors of the tower. Martin Brudnizki's studio gave them aged oak floors, jewel-toned velvet, cognac leather headboards, vintage furniture and Carrara marble bathrooms with rain showers. The entry Superior Queen is 285 sq ft (26 m²), but the Premium King is the first room that feels different, at 375 sq ft (35 m²) under high ceilings and crown mouldings. Soaking tubs come with some suites. The two Turret Penthouses are duplexes inside the corner towers, each with its own roof terrace.
The reason to book is the atrium, a protected interior. It rises nine storeys, ringed by eight tiers of galleries, to a glazed pyramid skylight on its original cast-iron frame. The lowest tier is a recreation with etched glass panels copying the old ironwork, but the seven above keep their Queen Anne cast-iron balustrades, dragon brackets and encaustic tile. Look for the double hatches in the gallery floors, safe hoists that spared tenants winching their safes through the windows, and the original cast-iron stair winding up round the lift shaft. The walls that hid it for half a century are why the ironwork survived, and on 4 June 2024 it became a New York City interior landmark. On its floor, The Bar Room sets out jewel-toned sofas and bookcases, Tom Colicchio's Temple Court sits behind stained glass beside it, and Daniel Boulud's Le Gratin has the street corner.
The trade is the noise and the extras. The Bar Room is a public bar at the foot of an open well, serving until 1am at weekends, and Laissez Faire, the club in the cellar, plays until 4am on Fridays and Saturdays. A destination fee of $45.89 a night plus tax sits on every room, there is no spa or pool, only a two-level gym, and facade repairs have kept scaffolding at the building. Book it for the landmarked Victorian atrium, with Downtown on foot. Look elsewhere if early nights and Midtown theatres are the plan.
