Graduate New York

The Graduate hotels tend to play an outsized role in the hospitality scenes of the college towns they call home, but this one stretches the traditional definition of “college town” just a bit. Even many New Yorkers are still unaware that Roosevelt Island is home to the Cornell Tech campus, a satellite of the Ithaca-based Ivy League university. Graduate Roosevelt Island is the island’s only hotel, and in typical Graduate style it’s dedicated to the campus that it serves.

This being New York, of course, the Graduate is a touch more forward-looking and urban in style than, say, the Iowa City iteration, with architecture and design by the Oslo-based firm Snøhetta. The rooms come with views of the Manhattan skyline, and are bright and colorful — none more so than the Loft Suite, full of childlike charm (and inspired by the Tom Hanks movie “Big.”)

The all-day restaurant, Anything At All, is as versatile as it sounds, and the Poindexter Coffee Cart keeps guests suitably stimulated. And on the 18th-floor rooftop, the Panorama Room bar and terrace offers an astonishing 360-degree view of New York from an angle most New Yorkers have never experienced.