Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 85

WW wyn hiwv ww'y i PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE SUNDAY, APRIL 30, 2000 1 A 'Vt If you go: The Mansfield, 12 44th St, 212-944-6050, www.mansfieldhotel.com. The Iroquois, 49 44th 212-840-3080, www.iroquoisny.com. The Algonquin, 59 W. 44th St, 212-840-6800, www.camberleyhotels.com newyork dr.htm. TheTime, 224 49th 212-246-5252, www.thetimeny.com.

The Inn at Irving Place, 56 Irving Place, 212-533-4600, www.innatirving.com. brary. For our last week in New York City, my wife, Nicole, urged me to book a reservation in one of the newest hotels in town, this one not on West 44th Street, but located at 224 49th St Known by the name The Time, this newest of boutique hotels is owned by a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, a 27-year old Sikh impresario, actor, model, Vikram Chatwal, who somehow managed to convince the Gascon wunderkind Jean-Louis Pal-ladin to establish a restaurant in his futuristic domain, which consists of 192 boutique rooms colored to match your mood: red, yellow or blue. If you choose a red room, you become the recipient of a jar of red jelly beans, while blue and yellow jelly beans are allotted to tneir own colored rooms. Rates run from $165 to $245, with a triplex on the top floor at $2,500 a night Perfect for Sting or Madonna with a spectacular wraparound terrace that makes you feel as though you're flying over the city.

I never did get a chance to interview the hotelier playboy screenwriter, Chatwal, but touching down at his creation gave me an idea of the man who was living in our time and perhaps a few steps ahead of most hoteliers. You must dine once at Palladin and, if you are sagacious, ask for the chef's tasting starting with a glass of champagne served with a quail egg nested on brioche toast with a dollop of Beluga caviar. Another small luxury hotel, which we did not have the time to visit, was the Inn at Irving Place, located downtown at 56 Irving Place. This converted landmark townhouse of 12 exquisite guest rooms furnished with antiques reminiscent of the New York of Edith Wharton has all the modern comforts the experienced traveler would expect, especially with a standard at $295, a deluxe at $375 and suites ranging from $425 to $450 including continental breakfast and newspapers. Although the Inn at Irving Place is in the center of historic Gramercy Park, which is lovely and quiet, give me West 44th Street Club Row, and I could live Juite happily for the rest of my ays in James Dean's cozy suite with its plump, over-sized bed with pillows to float upon and in the living room, a wonderful antique -French desk waiting for a letter or a story to be written.

Frank Sinatra said it best: "New York, New York, is a town," notwithstanding S. J. Perl-man's acid remark that every time he came to New York, he felt that he was inhaling "twice-breathed air." George Mendoza is the author of 100 books. When not traveling the world in search of unusual places to write about, he makes Greensburg his home base, although he keeps a small apart-; ment in New York City "for old time's sake." bear in tow, over to the Stork Club, where once a woman snatched it from him only to be tackled by the movie star." Any traveler staying at the Algonquin, where the prices of standard rooms and suites range slightly higher than those at the Iroquois, should be aware that if you re looking for one of those fine, home-cooked meals, you need only go downstairs to the Algonquin's cozy dining room where chef Leon Palmer will broil you the best steak in New York City. Last of our three hotel experiences on Club Row was the recently renovated, historic landmark, architectural gem, the Mansfield, which is located at 12 44th St.

It was a hard choice for us to decide which hotel we liked better, the Iroquois or the Mansfield, for the latter makes you feel as though you are back in time when it was used as a pied-a-terre for New York's most eligible bachelors. Off the art deco lobby, you will quickly discover an intimate reading room with a working fireplace and, believe it or not, a cappuccinoespresso bar that is kept in full service round the clock. When I saw that Cimballi at my disposal, I felt myself in paradise, for there was my daily hot cappuccino, fireplace and International Herald Tribune among a panoply of other worldwide newspapers. Well, what did Ada Louise Huxtable say? "When it is good, New York is very, very good." What is a typical room like? -j I If Sleigh beds with back-lit iron and wire mesh headboards, white and beige cotton Belgium linens, ebonized floors, customized etched glass French doors and ingeniously crafted metal and fabric armoires. In the hallways, you'll walk the original terrazzo floors shining again and flowing into the oval staircases with their refurbished hand-turned mahogany railings and intricate iron balustrades.

A sheer beauty, the Mansfield, an original to say the least Prices range slightly lower than the Iroquois, and there is a complementary European-style breakfast and one more cappuccino to start the day served in an elegant paneled li Travel Leisure magazine has said of the Mansfield Hotel, designed by Stanford White: "For so much style and such a location, the price n't get any better." This is part of the lobby of the hotel, at 1 2 W. 44th Manhattan. Hotels live up to legendary status Al Anderson, Simone de Beauvoir, Helen Hayes, Edna O'Brien, Maya An-gelou, Sinclair Lewis (who offered to buy the hotel), William Faulkner (who drafted his Nobel acceptance speech there in 1950), Dorothy Parker, Robert E. Sherwood, George S. Kaufman, S.J.

Perlman, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway lived, worked, drank and dined, and exchanged ideas and gossip that was picked up by the Tribune the following day. Still regarded as the place to see and be seen, the expansive lounge-styled lobby is always filled with celebrities and the curious. One of my highlights was seeing the drawings of the famous New Yorker cartoonist Gahan Wilson, who illustrated one of my best-sellers, "Hairticklers," reproduced on the wallpapered hall that led to our less than capacious room, unlike the suite we had at the Iroquois. But the hotel was fully booked, and who lives in a hotel room anyway when you have New York City at your feet? Some gossip passed along to me, thanks to Arthur Pomposello, a loquacious fixture at the Algonquin, to be sure: "John Garfield, tough guy, film star, loved to play poker here and considered all those who tried to beat him pushovers." Pomposello also informed me that Humphrey Bogart was barred from the hotel because he'd get drunk and would jump from one table to the next like a monkey.

Then he'd take himself, with his favorite teddy HOTELS FROM PAGE F-1 That description could easily fit all three hotels and, when you look around at the over-the-top prices in New York City today, the wise traveler should look toward the Iro- Suois, the Algonquin and the Mans-eld as harbors of elegance, turn-of-the-century style, and the warmth and radiance that resides within. Our favorite, we agreed, was the Iroquois, 49 44th where the charming manager, Paul Celnik, made sure we got the capacious James Dean suite, which was a sybaritic indulgence that James Dean could never have experienced back in those years before the hotel was restored to its recent present-day status as one of the world's finest small luxury hotels. And, wow, what a special chef's tasting dinner we experienced at the Iroquois' new gourmet restau- rant, Tnomphe, headed by the young, talented Steven ZobeL who had worked uptown at the Sign of the Dove and at the world-famous Black Dog Tavern in Martha's Vineyard. Rooms at the Iroquois cost from $275 to $325, and suites range from $295 to $345. Car parking is $30 to $50 a night.

Next, we moved a few steps down the street to that unabashedly literary landmark hotel, the Algonquin, located at 59 W. 44th where the likes of Douglas Fairbanks John Barrymore, H.L. Mencken, Gertrude Stein, Marian Orlando Florida Boacfios Vacations include roundtrip air on US Airways, hotel 4-door compact Alamo Rent A Car. And remember, if comparing vacation prices, ours also include air, hotel and all car taxes. Nonstop sen ice is available.

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