Brooklyn’s Hotel Le Bleu

New York City’s newly hip borough gets its first boutique hotel

Brooklyn has been called a lot of things in its 400-year history: “the garden spot of the universe” (a tongue-in-cheek nickname still cited by some old-timers), “city of homes and churches” (to distinguish it from its corrupted neighbor, Manhattan, at the turn of the century) and, more recently, “the locus of the world’s hipster activity,” as The New York Times put it in a 2006 real-estate article.

Hotel Le Bleu's simple elegance extends outdoors.

But “luxury hotel destination” is a new identity for the New York City borough. Both InterContinental and Sheraton have announced plans to introduce their boutique lines—Indigo and aloft, respectively—in Brooklyn, and other small deluxe hotels are planned there as well. But Hotel Le Bleu got there first. The eight-story hotel, featuring a sleek design and high-tech accoutrements in its 48 guest rooms, opened last November on Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue, about 2½ miles from the Brooklyn Bridge. Trendy Fifth Avenue in the Park Slope neighborhood, with an assortment of restaurants and boutiques, is just a block away.

Designed by Andres Escobar, Hotel Le Bleu features 30 rooms with king-size beds and 18 with two doubles. “What you find in these rooms is actually a little bit ahead of the curve,” says General Manager Robert Gaeta, a hotel industry veteran previously associated with such Manhattan properties as The New Yorker, the Wellington and the Sheraton New York. “You find a lot of features in these rooms that people haven’t even incorporated into their homes yet. Usually it’s the other way around: Your house has nicer stuff than the hotel does.”

Luxury and Harmony
Every room at Le Bleu contains a 42-inch plasma TV with DVD player and Bose surround-sound, Internet ports at the desk and bedside, iPod dock in the clock radio and a cordless telephone. The ergonomic beds have custom-made mattresses, goose-down duvets and 300-thread-count Egyptian linens. Bathrobes provided for guests feel like a chenille/cashmere blend and are from a brand promoted by Oprah Winfrey as one of her “Favorite Things.” Guest rooms have a chair at the desk, but no easy chair.

Le Bleu’s rooms feature the “open bathroom” that’s been popularized by boutique hotels: The toilet is behind a sliding frosted-glass door, but there’s no door between the bedroom and the sink area. The oversized shower stall has a rain showerhead and is separated from the bedroom only by its glass walls, though guests can close a curtain around the stall. Bathroom fixtures are by Grohe, and the toiletries— flaxseed soap, quinoa shampoo, amaranth conditioner, etc.— are from the Davies Gate botanical line. Also typical of boutique hotels, Le Bleu rooms have a very white color scheme (with blue accents, of course).

All but nine guest rooms have their own balcony. Even-numbered rooms face Manhattan, with the Statue of Liberty and Financial District skyscrapers visible across a semi-industrial part of Brooklyn that includes the harbor and the Gowanus Canal. Odd-numbered rooms look south and east over Brooklyn. The borough’s church spires are visible from almost all rooms, and from the balconies there is a good view of Brooklyn’s tallest building: the 512-foot Williamsburgh Savings Bank clocktower (built in 1929). The hotel’s best room, according to Gaeta, is #708—the highest unit with a balcony and Manhattan view.

While the hotel currently has no public space other than a small lobby, a restaurant named Vue will be opening on the top floor sometime this spring, with a rooftop bar due to open shortly afterward. Both are expected to draw local customers as well as hotel guests. The restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner and have a Continental menu. Gaeta says an undulating “Frank Gehry-type ceiling” is part of its design plan, as is an outdoor seating section on the balcony. The rooftop lounge will feature a canopy and illumination and views of two states and four boroughs.

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