The Washington Post | January 10, 1985

BREAKING THE RULES WITH ANDRÉE PUTMAN AND STEVE RUBELL

An Old Hotel with a Bold New Look

By Judith Weinraub

As front men for a chic new hotel, they are an unlikely pair: Andrée Putman, the Parisian interior designer extraordinaire, the hottest decorating property on either side of the Atlantic; and Steve Rubell, the one time co-owner of Studio 54, whose career as the emperor of disco ended abruptly in 1980 when he went to prison for tax evasion.

But at Morgans, the hotel they brought to life late last year on Manhattan's Madison Avenue, they are a dazzling duo-full of praise for each other and proud of the stylish and very "in" place that has drawn them together. "AndrÈe is terrific-she's so creative," says Rubell. "You can just give her a budget, and you don't have to worry about it." Adds Putman approvingly, "From the very beginning, we understood each other immediately."

The crew behind Morgans, also includes , Studio 54's former co-owner and Rubell's college classmates, as well as their partner, real estate developer Philip Pilevsky. Together this lively group has created a design statement for the '80s-a mostly black, white and gray hotel that looks like no other before it, a watering hole with a sleek, understated limestone and glass faÁade that is le dernier cri in international interior decoration.

They brought off this pearl of a place pretty much the way Rubell and Schrager created Studio 54-by being iconoclasts, by not playing by the traditional and predictable rules of hotel design that say you need two double beds in every room and flocked wallpaper and pastel colors and brightly patterned bedspreads. "I hate the idea of bedspreads," says the elegant Putman. "They disgust me."

They didn't have much to work with when they started out-a broken down hotel, the Executive, that had small rooms, and a diminishing reputation. They were also determined to keep to a limited budget. Rubell thinks it worked out better that way: "It was a challenge. Any time you have all the money and all the space and all the time, the project is likely to be a disaster," he says.

Nor did any of them know much about running or designing hotels-not even Putman. Explains Rubell, "Andrée had never done a hotel before, which was important. We didn't want any preconceived notions that you have to have marble everywhere."

Steve Rubell's fascination with hotels developed after he got out of prison in April 1981, not knowing what he was going to do next, and couldn't get into his own apartment (the building was being renovated). He coped by living in a hotel for a few days, then moved to another, and another until, by his count, he had stayed in every hotel in New York City. He had always been interested in design, had heard real estate was good for tax reasons, and, as he explains in the familiar Brooklyn cadence that endures despite years of life on the fast track, "I've always been in hospitality-restaurants, clubs. I love the action and the idea that there's never a dull moment. And this business is the ultimate form of hospitality. I began to think I could do this business."

Rubell's and Schrager's idea was a small hotel that seemed residential, a place where the rooms looked more like guest rooms than a hotel rooms. "I wanted something warm and comfortable," says Rubell. "I felt that there was a need for something that would attract people with a sense of style, but where the rates are fairly moderate."

Adds Schrager, "The first criteria was that we didn't want just to pay lip service to the idea of looking residential. We wanted it to be residential. And we didn't want fancy. Steve and I don't know about fancy. And we didn't want anything that had already been seen before, where our idea would just be a variation. If you want to excite people you have to give them something new."

When the two friends became aware of the availability of the property, they decided to go for it. After interviewing over two dozen big name architects and interior designers about creating the look of the hotel, they decided on Putman. "There was a new notion kicking around about European hotels," explains Schrager. "We wanted an informal version. But if you want a European hotel, our No. 1 thought was to go to a real European. Andrée had a lot of work published that seemed just right."

It was a natural marriage from the start. "I never knew quite how they found me," recalls Putman in a deep, throaty voice reminiscent of a Marlene Dietrich with a French accent. Rubell and Schrager had called her to discuss their proposition only two hours before she was scheduled to fly back to Europe. "At the beginning I had not much hope that anything so important could be discussed for 10 minutes in a hotel lobby," she says. "It made me think that these people are definitely not serious."

But serious is exactly what they were. "We looked at everybody, we talked to everybody," says Rubell. "But people didn't understand at all what we were trying to do. We wanted something different very, very, badly, something that had a fresh outlook. In the '70s there was a boom of interior designers, but right now I happen to think the only one doing something fresh is AndrÈe."

Indeed, Andrée Putman is currently a very big deal name in interior design, with a client list that reads like a sourcebook for the world's best-dressed: she has 14 Yves Saint Laurent boutiques in the United States to her credit; she has redesigned Karl Lagerfeld's Seventh Avenue showroom and offices, and is currently at work on an additional building for Barney's, the up scale specialty store in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, that is scheduled to be finished this summer; there are also a few other little things, like a museum in Bordeaux, some private houses in France, and a "very important" project in Rome.

The initial decision at Morgans was whether to start from scratch, or to work within the constraints of the 1929 building, warts and all. "The building was a mess," admits Putman. "I couldn't believe it. It was all styles. Nothing was coordinated any more. There were coats and coats of different wallpapers. The lobby had the most unbelievable chandelier I have seen in my whole life. Too many people with absolutely no sense of style had destroyed the whole place. But you could feel immediately that once it had been a nice building, and that once there was a logic and a nice design to it."

So, their fingers crossed, the team decided to work with what they had. "It was much more clever to keep what was left," says Putman proudly.

Because the Madison Avenue façade would announce the tone of the building to passers by, how to deal with it was a major design decision. But it was hard to imagine what architectural elements were actually there because the original façade was covered over by several different remodeling jobs. Working inside out from the lobby, they got a ladder and a lamp and-to their delight-discovered that buried beneath the marble front were arches and columns and other original details they could uncover happily.

Limestone was chosen as the exterior covering, and sleek glass window walls, two stories high and recessed slightly, were added. Says Putman, "It's like the ruin of the past and its modern solution."

Inside there were problems, too, mostly because of the small size of the rooms and bathrooms. And then there were all those niggling things that hotel rooms were supposed to have. They started out by making a list of everything that they hated about most hotels. It became a list of what they would avoid: oversized flower arrangements; the informational tent cards that Putman describes as "little pieces of cardboard everywhere-even in the best hotels"; a television set hidden in an ostentatious piece of furniture; garish colors; a staff so polite that it sounded pretentious; and of course, the piteous colored bedspread.

Then, naturally enough, they decided quite consciously to break the rules.

Their program was to use every inch of space, to think small, and to turn each room into a wonderful, soothing place. An image that Putman often refers to, explaining her approach, is that of a ship, with its economy of space.

The feeling that the rooms conveyed as unnaturally long and narrow was dealt with when Putman conceived a seating and storage area banquette that tends to square off the space. Then the mostly black, white and gray color scheme was implemented with many different subdued patterns. "I thought that the room would have charm if each material, textile, pattern of the wall, had a little life," says Putman. "Flat solutions wouldn't work."

The beds are all topped, not by the much maligned bedspreads, but by comforters covered in gray and white pin-striped shirting. (The headboards are done up in the same fabric so that the entire bed covering can go to the laundry.) A black and white buffalo check blanket is folded neatly at the foot of the bed. The furniture continues the color scheme with sleek gray Mallet Stephens straight chairs, gray flannel Art Deco style lounge chairs, black or white glass top tables and gray wood veneer cabinets. The only decoration on the Zolatone treated walls are specially commissioned and signed black and white photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.

One of the biggest challenges was the design of the bathrooms. There Putman, encouraged by Rubell and Schrager to do "an exciting bathroom without marble," reversed her subdued approach and went bold, selecting strong black and white tiles, metal sinks patterned after the ones used in hospitals and shower stalls with see through glass doors like the ones used in New York City bus shelters.

The result of such meticulous attention is a study in details, down to the black pencils with white erasers, the black and white matches and sewing kits, the elegant glass and steel night tables too delicate to store the standard telephone books and Bibles, and even the unisex clothing worn by the staff: black Giorgio Armani sweater vests and burgundy knit ties, gray flannel trousers, white Calvin Klein shirts, black Bass Weejun loafers, black socks, even black and white chefs pants for the kitchen staff. The cleaning staff is dressed entirely in black. The same attention to detail was given to the selection of the staff, all 70 of whom were interviewed personally by Rubell. "I wanted nice, wholesome kids who didn't have a New York attitude," he says.

Morgans is a small hotel, with only 154 rooms, 30 percent of which are suites. Rubell, who lives in one of the smaller suites, is proud that the hotel has already started to make money, and shows signs of being hard to get into as well. Although the point of the hotel is to make it attractive to people with a certain style, no matter how limited their income level (room rates start at $75 on weekends and $90 on weekdays), guests with names like Claude Montana, Keith Carradine, Bianca Jagger and Duran Duran do have an impact. (But remember those suites-not to mention the 10-room duplex penthouse.)

Still to come are Morgans Bar (a small restaurant and bar with an ethos Rubell and Schrager envision as a little like the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel; it is expected to open by March) and a larger restaurant (hoped for by April) that may make it harder still to get in.

But now that Morgans has been launched, there is also their next project to look forward to-the Palladium, a club that they are creating out of the former Academy of Music on 14th Street between Third and Fourth avenues. Although Rubell says it's a little too soon to talk about the Palladium, that building is likely to make its own design impact-with lots of different zones, seating areas, spaces just to promenade in and maybe even a club within a club.

"Studio 54 was the 1970s," says Rubell, who is clearly excited about the Palladium. "This is the 1980s. It will be much more sophisticated. The disco period is over. Blinking lights are over. But dancing is not over, and good times are not over. People still love to dance, and there's great dance music."

Says Putman ecstatically (she is already at work on the building with its architect Arata Isozaki), "At first it looked like a deserted concert hall full of charm but totally worn out, with nostalgic memories of great classical concerts from the beginning of the century, and I think many rock concerts too. And now it is the hottest thing I have to concentrate on."

Then too, there is always the possibility of more hotels, maybe even new ones. As he charges off to attend to the day's crises-a lapse in the hot water, a severed city power line that had interrupted the previous night's electrical supply-he admits, "It would be nice not to have fixed walls or old problems.

"This business is like the girl in high school you didn't mean to get involved with," he says excitedly. "I didn't mean to fall in love with this business-I just did."