Everyone Wants to Live Inside This Glamorous Art Deco Broadway Set

I normally ask designers about their favorite hotels, but I actually want to ask you about one of my favorites! I love your design for the Civilian Hotel—it feels like such a natural extension of your theater work. 

Civilian was a bucket-list project and a real labor of love for me. It seems almost inevitable that it would marry my two greatest passions, hospitality and theater, because I think they’re so inexorably linked to each other.

From the beginning, we wanted it to be about the theater community, giving people a glimpse of how theater is made and the type of places theater people like to hang out—a chance to peek behind the scenes at what makes theater so special.

At the heart of it is the Olio Collection, which includes more than 250 pieces of art—sketches, models, costumes—representing more than a century of Broadway history. We built in a partnership with the American Theater Wing, and there are rotating exhibits, like in the blue room, which is redone every two years with a different curator.