Revere revolutionizes Boston hotel scene
Modern creative touches add to vibe
The revolution has come — for the second time. The Revere Hotel Boston Common has shaken up a historic district with an edgy, modern design, a sexy nightclub and high-energy rooftop pool parties that eradicate any hint of the city as staid and proper.
The Revere is a newcomer to one of the most established and prestigious quarters of America, at the centre of a triangle of the Boston Common, the theatre district and Copley Square. The Common was the United States’ first formal city park. Its history dates to the 1600s, and it played a significant role during the U.S. War of Independence of the 1770s. But, what about 2014? The Revere’s very today design starts at the get-go. Students of the Massachusetts College of Art & Design created the car valets’ brassbutton uniforms. And once you step through the hotel’s glass entrance, you are in an artistic wonderland of sensual shapes and subtle shine. There is an undercurrent of glamour, boutique-style.
The concierge works in a white lacquered niche, with iPads set into the walls so that travellers can digitally preview their tourism stops. Guests glide down a curved ramp of glass and steel and spiral into a secluded, round seating area. Circle out, and the lobby opens up to a sweeping space of pearl and platinum, accented with a giant teardrop chandelier, a pair of white Mies van der Rohe Barcelona couches and a sculptural wall of glossy metalflake blocks of wood.
Finally, at the front desk, you are handed a tulip of bubbly Italian brut. You have arrived in the new, post-revolutionary Boston.
The hotel has 356 rooms, all with private balconies and fully renovated bathrooms. Some of the suites add wet bars, robes by Frette of Italy and Bang & Olufsen sound systems with iPad docks. The look is decidedly contemporary, but the white Zen model has been fired up with a hotpot of textures: dramatic dark-wood trim, linen-textured walls, crocodile-style skin on a table and lamé-laced chenille on an armchair. The over-sized headboards are tufted leather and the desks are chrome and white lacquer.
The Revere’s central location, its 24-hour free office services and complimentary daily Wall Street Journal have added up to accolades as best business hotel in Boston by both trendy Wallpaper magazine and the financial bible, Fortune. Seriously, what are the chances of recognition from two such divergent worlds?
On the leisure front, the Revere’s message might be “live large, celebrity-style,” and it has the party spaces to prove it.
The Emerald Lounge is a sexy nightclub where the action starts at 9 p.m., with a DJ spinning Top 40 hits and patrons dancing around the tables, as the music moves them. There are such latenight nibbles as duck spring rolls and cocktails like Pepino en Fuego, a tropical sizzler of jalapeno tequila. If you feeling rich ‘n’ famous, you can run up a tab of $1,600 for an extravagant gold-plated bottle of Armand de Brignac Champagne, a.k.a. Ace of Spades, the bubbly favoured by Beyoncé and Jay-Z.
The hotel’s summertime party place is Rooftop@Revere, one of Boston’s most rockin’ lounges, where American Hustle star Amy Adams was photographed for a magazine spread. The Rooftop embraces an indoor pool and a sunny outdoor deck of chaise longues and private cabanas. The pool is open year-round, but the bar revs up in May with beach-clad servers sporting Lycra shorts and tops designed by the new Voguefamous label, Pret-à-Surf.
The Revere is part hotel and part lifestyle inspiration. You can browse through the lobby and plan your shopping day. Display cases show off the gourmet delicacies of Olives and Grace and the men’s and women’s fashions of Ted Baker London, which both have shops nearby. You can have a tantalizing peek at the skin-care lotions of Vancouver-based skoah — the name is lower case for modern minimalism. The first of the brand’s innovative facial salons in the U.S., skoah south end, is just down the street from Revere. Skoah employs “personal trainers” who do restorative “workouts” for the face, notably the Facialiscious and the Xtreme.
Lunch and dinner are served in The Revere’s branch of Rustic Kitchen. In contrast to the hotel’s cool, the trattor- ia is bathed in warmth, with Tuscan-inspired décor, low ceiling beams and wooden chairs. Specialties include burrata cheese, meatballs, chicken risotto, baked rigatoni, steaks and such Atlantic seafood as haddock, lobster, scallops and oysters. An open pizza oven and a pasta corner are evidence that almost everything is Italianinspired, fulsome and cooked to order.
Rustic Kitchen has star power, too. The Cooking Show, starring celebrity chef Liz Bramwell, tapes on Friday nights and a lucky dozen or so patrons watch, learn and taste. I wasn’t able to find the Emmy-winning broadcast on my cable service in Montreal, but you can apply online for a spot on the show anyway.