Aiming to marry the elegance of post-war Paris with the literary legacy of its Greenwich Village location, The Marlton is a small-scale hotel with big ambitions and plenty to suggest it will fulfil them. The first big thing in the hotel’s favour is the experience of owner Sean MacPherson has a strong record of accommodation in the city, including interests in The Bowery, Jane and Maritime Hotels, and who designed The Marlton from scratch. His own visits to Paris, as well as the aesthetics conjured by F Scott Fitzgerald in Tender is the Night, are cited as the major influences at this 107-room place – upmarket but downsized from the usual luxury city centre hotels.

The neighbourhood is another plus, just off Washington Square Park on West 8th Street – an area which is currently seeing a lot of investment, but which hasn’t yet inflated prices accordingly, and a room at The Marlton can be had from $275 . The property – formerly Marlton House – is one of those storied buildings that attracted artistic types and counter-culture figures from the outset. Built in 1900, controversial actress Lillian Gish, would-be Warhol assassin Valerie Solanas and Lenny Bruce all lived here, the latter while awaiting trial for obscenity, and Jack Kerouac wrote two of his novellas while in residence at The Marlton. Behaviour has probably improved a bit since then though.