The Mark Hotel

It’s about as far as you can get — both figuratively and literally — from the funky downtown boutique hotels of lower Manhattan. The Mark is the very picture of classic, timeless Upper East Side poshness, in spite of — or maybe even because of — its recent, extremely thorough renovation. And in its present incarnation it’s proof that old money doesn’t necessarily imply old-fashioned.

Take the Mark Restaurant by Jean-Georges (yes, that Jean-Georges) as an example. It’s a long way from weak tea in the afternoon and lobster Thermidor at night. The menu could hold its own against anyone in the city, and the space, designed by Jacques Grange, is not at all unstylish, for any side of the park. (The same can be said of Caviar Kaspia, an outpost of the Parisian institution.) And while the lobby’s dazzle is classic, decked out in Deco-flavored black and white, and the rooms are as subtle as can be, there’s a certain stylishness to the Mark’s elegance, which only sneaks up slowly.

The bottom line is that there’s nobody on the Upper East Side, however conventional, who’d feel that the the looks, the atmosphere, or the very traditional service at the Mark would be too forward-looking to take. And yet there are few downtown denizens, one imagines, who couldn’t see the elegant appeal of the place, should they find themselves this side of Midtown.