• Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

  • Steve Freihon

    Steve Freihon

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Hotel & Other Overnight Accommodations

New York’s Roosevelt Island’s first hotel by Stonehill Taylor and Snøhetta

Located at 22 North Loop Road, the 224-key hotel rises to 18-storeys, hotel and is integrated into Cornell Tech offering a full-service restaurant, indoor-outdoor rooftop bar, and 3,600 sq ft of meeting and event facilities

by Nav Pal 04 November 2021

Serving as the island’s first hotel, Graduate Roosevelt Island marks the brand’s 29th property and New York City debut. The hotel offers a scholastic retreat in the middle of the East River with bright, modern spaces and views of Manhattan, Queens and beyond. 

Positioned at the entrance of the Cornell Tech campus, the hotel is architecturally designed by Snøhetta and Stonehill Taylor, with interior design from Graduate Hotels’ in-house team. The hotel’s interior design blends Old School and New Age, taking inspiration from both the history of Roosevelt Island and the future of technology that the Cornell Tech campus embodies. 

Guests are greeted with a custom 12ft statement sculpture created by Hebru Brantley that reinterprets his iconic Flyboy character and a neon Graduate sign situated above the reception desk, which is a reimagined vintage apothecary cabinet. 

Nods to the island’s storied history can be seen through the corridor behind the front desk, which features a gallery of black and white photographs of the Roosevelt family. The lobby is home to the hotel’s full-service, all-day restaurant with a statement wraparound bar anchoring the space and a variety of inviting lounge seating.

Stonehill Taylor was instrumental in the creation of the lobby space, which features a monolithic 30-foot-tall ceiling made from acoustical plaster. The design of the ceiling was important in connecting the interior space to the exterior as part of the full campus experience. The ceiling’s unique trapezoidal wedge shape points upward towards the East River and Manhattan and aligns with the exterior soffit and façade planes to convey the sense of a mass floating above the ground. 

Unobstructed by lighting, the ceiling is reflectively lit by a fixture along the space’s perimeter. Three-quarters of the wall are glass windows and when paired with hard floors, the acoustics of the space proved challenging. Stonehill Taylor employed materials that would both soften the soundscape and accommodate the ceiling’s complex, three-dimensional shape. The wall opposite the floor-to-ceiling windows features 5,000 sq ft of shelving with uplighting built into it that bounces off the ceiling above and surfaces below.

The guest rooms offer a familiar, residential experience, with décor that plays with technology throughout the ages as seen through lamps with a Morse code of the Cornell fight song on the base, a neon light fixture inspired by a science project from a Cornell alum, floating glass desks and integrated audiovisual devices. 

The hotel furthers the campus’ ongoing commitment to sustainability through its LEED-rated architecture and use of highly efficient materials and energy-saving systems throughout the property, including highly efficient heating, cooling and LED lighting systems, reduced water consumption, waste reclamation programs, healthy indoor air quality and more.


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