Best 5-Star Hotels in New York

Park Hyatt's flagship across from Carnegie Hall swims in art — 350 commissioned works — and its 25th-floor pool pipes underwater recordings from Carnegie itself. Rooms start among the largest in the city. The contemporary five-star done with actual imagination.

Perched atop Columbus Circle, the Mandarin Oriental's lobby, spa, and pool all sit 35 floors up with Central Park unrolling below — the best high-altitude park view any New York hotel owns. Service runs on the group's Asian standard. Book a park-view room or don't bother.

The Peninsula holds the corner of Fifth and 55th with a rooftop bar overlooking the avenue, a full spa and pool on top of the building, and the brand's famous bathtubs with fingertip controls. Traditional five-star service in shopping-district ground zero.

Aman turned the Crown Building into Manhattan's most rarefied stay: 83 suites, every one with a working fireplace, a three-floor spa with a 65-foot pool, and a jazz club below street level. The rates are absurd; the experience genuinely has no local rival.

The Carlyle has been the Upper East Side's discreet grand hotel since 1930 — Kennedys and royals upstairs, Bemelmans Bar's Madeline murals and nightly piano downstairs. Rooms mix Art Deco bones with chintz and marble. New York's most complete old-money experience.

Jacques Grange's black-and-white striped lobby announces the Mark's personality: uptown polish with downtown wit, a Jean-Georges restaurant, and the Met a two-block walk through Carlyle territory. Met Gala week runs through this lobby. Sharp, social five-star.

The Greenwich's five-star case rests on feel rather than flash: hand-loomed rugs and no-two-alike rooms, the Shibui Spa's lantern-lit pool beneath an antique Japanese farmhouse frame, and a courtyard where nobody looks up from their book. Quietly the best downtown.

Tribeca's five-star standard: an 82-story Silverstein tower with a 75-foot lap pool, a serious spa, and CUT's steaks below, minutes from the neighborhood's lofts and the Oculus. The modern counterpart to Midtown's grande dames.