Stylist’s features director Lucy Foster checks into a Manhattan townhouse hotel perfectly placed for Uptown girls

If only all my landings in NYC were this comfortable, plonking me onto a snug sofa, sipping steaming coffee and eating homemade cookies 23 floors above the icy Manhattan streets. “I’m on a roof terrace!” I say to my mum via Skype. “I’m also in New York!” And just to prove I’m not lying, I treat her to a view of skyscrapers and the Hudson River.

The terrace sits atop WestHouse New York, a chic art deco-inspired hotel designed to feel like your very own swish Uptown apartment. At five blocks from Central Park, it’s eminently walkable to MOMA (housing the much-lauded Jackson Pollock retrospective until May), the Met and Carnegie Hall – even in winter. I’m here on a swift city jaunt, so being perfectly positioned for both culture and shopping was my top priority. I venture down Seventh Avenue in search of the Pennsy (thepennsy.nyc), the newly opened, much-Instagrammed food court at Penn Station, and tuck gratefully into BBQ Thai Tempeh (£7) at the first permanent site for cult food truck Cinnamon Snail (cinnamonsnail.com). After, I pop into Tanner Smith’s speakeasy (tannersmiths.com) for a Winona (£10), their take on an Old Fashioned, the classic Manhattan tipple. See, you can tick a couple of Big Apple boxes in a few short hours.

Escape routes: discover New York's hippest new townhouse hotel