The NoMad in London, once a prison but now European Hotel of the Year 2021, plays on its mixed history and proves the power and creative potential that lurk in even the darkest places. Let’s take a walk through a far from everyday hospitality venue.

Oscar Wilde, women’s rights campaigner Emmeline Pankhurst and the criminal Kray Twins, who made a not exactly glorious career in the Fifties and Sixties in London’s East End out of murder, theft, racketeering, arson and illegal gambling – they were all former residents here. Although resident perhaps isn’t quite the right word. Rather, they spent months or even years behind bars here – some of them for good legitimate reason, others not. On 20 April 1895, the following unhappy headline was emblazoned on the title page of the Police News: “Oscar Wilde at Bow Street”.

However, two years ago, the former Bow Street Magistrates Court and Police Station in the heart of Covent Garden hit the headlines again. This time not on account of its reluctant guests but rather because of those who came of their own free will to spend a few nights indulging in an intoxicating combination of light and shade, history and quirky innuendo, luxury for the body and adventuring for the mind. With this site at 28 Bow Street – halfway between the Thames and the British Museum, directly opposite the Royal Opera House – the American luxury hotel chain NoMad has now opened its first hotel on European soil. And what a hotel!

“The building was built in the 18th century and was used as a police station and prison for over 250 years,” says Stephen Alesch, who, with his partner Robin Standefer, runs the New York design bureau Roman and Williams. “The building has an austere, thoroughly masculine feel. We wanted to add a softer and more glamorous counterbalance to this strictly manly ambience and somehow give the hotel a feminine touch. This hotel is full of dichotomies, full of contrasts which for us embody an intervention that is dedicated to enjoyment and hedonism.”

Certainly in the evening, when the tables in the spacious dining room are sumptuously and ornately laid with traditional cutlery and crockery, and candles glow between miniature olive trees, you can see what is meant by the dichotomy of gender crossover. In the middle of the room stands what the New York design bureau describes as “untamed wildlife”, while in the background, the wooden wall and ceiling panelling is covered with a more than magical, almost ghostly, mural by the French artist Claire Basler.

Elsewhere, velvet, wall coverings, marble, crystal, Murano glass, fringes and tassels and design classics stand alongside stylish, glossily lacquered furniture. “No, we don’t have a particular style or characteristic signature,” say Stephen Alesch and Robin Standefer, he a passionate self-taught painter and artist, she a qualified stage and film director who worked for 15 years as a visual consultant for Martin Scorsese. “We work with what we find, and in this case that is a very expressive building that has lived through a lot and exudes an incredible, unmistakable energy. There are many forces at play in this building.”

Following its conversion by EPR Architects led by Mark Bruce, and the interior design by Roman and Williams, the NoMad Hotel, a listed building that is now owned by the Sydell Group, offers 91 luxury rooms. It also boasts a number of other exciting spaces including the lobby, atrium, library, Elephant Bar, seminar rooms and theatrically decorated lounges for weddings, banquets and private dining. Room prices are regularly between 400 and 600 pounds, so well beyond the pain threshold for many, but for that price you can sleep in the European Hotel of the Year 2021 in all its glory. “In our projects, we want people to experience luxury living, but also to discover pure romanticism and Bohemian joie de vivre,” says Alesch, who with his team has already given numerous hotels and prize-winning temples of gastronomy a new look and, according to the Architectural Digest, is one of the top 100 designers in the world. “We want people to be curious and eager to let their thoughts fly away, far, far away.” And who knows, maybe they will encounter the picture of Dorian Gray or the feminist spirit of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst in one of the rooms. I can resist everything except temptation – Oscar Wilde.

Wojciech Czaja

Images: © Simon Upton