Moxy Lower East Side has opened its doors in New York City. Marking the fourth Moxy hotel in the Big Apple to be developed by Lightstone, the 303-room property features architecture by Stonehill Taylor and interiors by Michaelis Boyd and Rockwell Group.

Inspired by the neighbourhood’s history as a crossroads of entertainment and culture, and its present-day role as an incubator of innovation, Moxy Lower East Side is home to five F&B venues by Tao Group Hospitality, including Japanese restaurant Sake No Hana; piano lounge Silver Lining; rooftop bar The Highlight Room; all-day café and lobby bar The Fix; and subterranean club Loosie’s.

Michaelis Boyd and Rockwell Group have taken their design inspiration from the Bowery’s history as a hub of entertainment – from the Vauxhall Gardens and German Winter Garden of the 1800s to the vaudeville theatres and burlesque houses of last century – while channelling the neighbourhood’s present-day DNA and maintaining Moxy’s trademark whimsy.

“The Lower East Side has always been iconically cool. We saw it as the next logical frontier for Moxy,” says Mitchell Hochberg, President of Lightstone. “By providing a variety of venues and concepts under a single roof, the hotel really embodies the diversity of the Lower East Side. People come to the neighbourhood to indulge their thirst for discovery, and they’ll get that at the Moxy too – and we’ve made it accessible rather than exclusive.”

Designed by Michaelis Boyd, the bedrooms at Moxy Lower East Side feature symmetrical shapes, bright hues and clever space-saving solutions. Bathrooms meanwhile offer rain showers with coloured glass doors, lava stone sinks and a mirror lined with Hollywood-style lighting. In the hotel’s interior courtyard hangs a large, provocative work by English urban artist D*Face, acclaimed for his subversive murals inspired by the Pop Art movement. The pièce de résistance however is The Factory Loft, a hospitality suite named after Andy Warhol’s legendary Factory studio with double-height windows and a sprawling outdoor terrace.

Michaelis Boyd also envisioned the first-floor lobby, creating a multipurpose work and amusement space with a relaxed ambience. The lobby area is centred around The Fix, a bar and all-day café where a variety of seating arrangements include sofas and armchairs, high-tops and café tables. In one corner is an Instagram-worthy hanging birdcage seat, while in the café area, marble-topped tables integrate brass tic tac toe inserts. Anthropomorphic tables feature sculptures of hipster animals, like a rock n’ roll sloth in a leather vest, while nearby a seven-foot bear holds a hula hoop. An adjacent table-height shuffleboard game uses pucks shaped like illicit pills. Overhead, 3D-printed pinup girls dangle from the chandeliers in cheeky, burlesque-inspired poses.

The lobby-adjacent, Silver Lining is a subdued and sultry piano lounge with sensuous décor. The intimate space is dotted with blue velvet banquettes and hosts live performances by a rotating mix of piano players and vocalists. Catching the eye is a wallcovering that depicts objects associated with the history of the Bowery and specifically with Warhol’s life and career – the banana from the Velvet Underground & Nico album cover, the face of one of his muses, as well as lines from a poem he wrote.

One flight down, beneath the hotel’s dramatic entry catwalk, guests enter modern Japanese restaurant Sake No Hana via two curved staircases of metal, glass and leather flanked by large kimono-inspired tapestries. Rockwell Group took inspiration from New York’s 1980s punk scene and Japanese street culture for the design, invigorating traditional izakaya comfort dishes with a New York attitude. On the menu are shareable plates like grilled teppanyaki, yakitori skewers, Wagyu beef and creative sushi rolls, paired with a list of sakes, beers and cocktails highlighting Japanese spirits.

Subterranean in both location and spirit, Rockwell Group-designed Loosie’s is an edgy club beneath Moxy Lower East Side. Guests reach the venue by heading down a mysterious alley behind the hotel, lined with graffiti by the late New York street artist Lance de los Reyes –aka Rambo – then descending several flights on a staircase. Inside, tufted banquettes, an exploded disco ball chandelier and a cage-like bar create a decadent atmosphere. Noah Tepperberg, Co-CEO of Tao Group Hospitality, partnered with Dylan Hales and Ronnie Flynn – the co-founders of Lower East Side hotspot The Flower Shop – as Creative Directors for both Loosie’s and Silver Lining. “The Flower Shop has become a neighbourhood fixture, and Dylan and Ronnie are really plugged into the local nightlife culture,” he explains. “At both venues, they’ll help curate the music and the atmosphere to appeal to the downtown crowd.”

A world away up on the 16th floor, The Highlight Room by Michaelis Boyd is a rooftop bar that evokes a 19th-century pleasure garden with foliage swaying from the ceiling and a palm tree spreading its branches across the room. The showstopper here is the view of the city – north to the Empire State Building, south to the Freedom Tower – through a glass wall that spans the entire width of the space and folds back to allow access to the planted outdoor terrace.

Tepperberg adds: “New York City is experiencing a huge renaissance right now, with locals and visitors coming to experience the city in waves. With a sophisticated but approachable piano lounge, a pulsating subterranean club, a modern Japanese restaurant with a festive atmosphere, and a rooftop bar with a big glam factor, Moxy Lower East Side will be ready to rock.”

Round out the hotel’s offer is over 13,000ft2 of flexible meeting and event space, including three Meeting Studios with modular furniture that can be easily reconfigured to transform the space into a lounge by night. The studio offers a communal table that can be used for co-working or closed off as a meeting room. Then at night, as the DJ spins and the lights dim, it becomes a place for socialising, with lounge seating and a Ms. Pac-Man game table.