The St. Regis New York

When John Jacob Astor IV opened the St. Regis in 1904, he intended it to be the finest hotel in New York, and the Beaux-Arts tower he raised at Fifth Avenue and 55th Street still argues the case. The limestone facade, gilded ironwork and crystal-lit lobby belong to a Manhattan of carriages and calling cards, yet the hotel has never let its history become a museum piece; it remains one of the city's most polished working addresses, midway between Central Park and the retail heart of Fifth Avenue.

Rooms and suites are dressed in silk wall coverings, marble bathrooms and restrained Louis XVI-inflected furniture, and every floor is attended by the St. Regis butlers—a service tradition that began here and was exported to the brand worldwide. The signature suites, several named for the great houses of fashion and design, are among Manhattan's most coveted, and the afternoon-tea ritual in the Astor Court unfolds beneath a trompe-l'oeil cloud ceiling.

The soul of the hotel, however, is the King Cole Bar, home to Maxfield Parrish's celebrated mural of Old King Cole and the birthplace of the Red Snapper, the cocktail the rest of the world knows as the Bloody Mary. It is a small, clubbable, faintly conspiratorial room that distils a century of New York glamour into a single sitting. For travellers who want the full grand-hotel experience in midtown, this remains the benchmark.