An elegant makeover for a classic
Ames Building interiors to be a New England first for 'boutique' designer Rockwell
The New York design firm that wowed guests at the boutique W hotels and trendy Nobu sushi restaurants has signed on to create interiors for a new hotel in the historic Ames Building in Boston.
In its first major project in New England, the Rockwell Group has been hired by hotel developer Normandy Real Estate Partners to design the rooms, lobby, common areas, and a restaurant at One Court Street, in the ornate 14-floor building that was Boston's first "tower."
"They kind of started the boutique industry and designed the first W hotel," said Justin Krebs, a principal of Normandy, who with his partners interviewed several interior designers for the centrally located Boston property, which dates from 1889. "They saw the space, and they just fell in love with it."
The unique exterior of the Ames building, designed in a combination of Byzantine and Romanesque styles, is an intricately carved and varied facade of granite, sandstone, and blue slate, with cornices, corbels, and carved-in-stone human heads, all of which the developers will preserve.
Rockwell Group is just getting started on the project, assessing the largely gutted structure, and won't have drawings for a couple of months. But designers and architects of the firm are working with club and restaurant owner Seth Greenberg, who is advising Normandy on restaurant and bar space and may operate the restaurant. It will occupy a large part of the first floor, opening onto Washington Street Mall, with views of State Street and the Old State House.
"It's a fabulous building, actually," said Gregory Stanford of Rockwell, which has also created spaces in Chambers hotels, the Venetian Theater in Las Vegas, and the wine bar at the St. Regis Hotel in New York.
"From a decor point of view, you really want the building to speak to you," said Stanford, who with his team will come up with a modern interior that nonetheless evokes the 1891 exterior. "That building has a lot it wants to give up. The grandeur of the outside has to match the inside."
Rockwell Group, whose website says, "Dreaming is one of our most important missions," specializes in restaurants and has dreamed up interiors at dozens of other high-profile eateries, hotels, residences, libraries, and cultural institutions. In the Boston area, Rockwell designed the interior for Best Cellars, a wine store at Coolidge Corner.
The firm said its design work doesn't have a "signature style," but rather "reflects a quirky pluralism." Its work on hotel lobbies seem to be characterized by a refined elegance, the spaces filled with high-quality materials rendered in styles, shapes, and at scales that evoke several eras.
Normandy, based in New Jersey, has aggressively bought property in the Boston area in the last few years and is currently renovating and rebranding the Holiday Inn in Newton to become an Indigo hotel, the first of InterContinental Hotels Group PLC's boutique brand to come to New England. The company is also converting a Holiday Inn in Atlantic City into the Chelsea Hotel.
Rockwell is working with Cambridge Seven Architects on the Ames's interiors. "It's a blank canvas with great bones," Stanford said. "With the customer for that location and where they want to be in terms of service, we think the expression would be modern."
"One thing we find most interesting is a building that has such a grand scale and at the same time is so intimate," he said. "It's curious how plain it is on the inside."
It's tricky to bring a building a century forward, Stanford said. "We want to respect the historical, but we don't really think people are looking for things to be sentimental." Architecturally, "Boston's got a lot of muscle," he said. "We're looking to create something that makes a strong statement. We're not looking to be wimpy."
Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at tpalmer@globe.com. 