Hotel Indigo Financial District — Photo by IHG

Hotel Indigo, a brand of the InterContinental Hotels Group that was slated to break ground last fall, will do so in May 2017 at 8-10 Maiden Lane in New York"s Financial District. The 90,000-square-foot hotel designed by Gene Kaufman Architect (GKA) has 24 stories and 190 rooms as well as a ground-floor restaurant and rooftop bar.

The hotel"s design mixes old and new, with an old-school masonry façade on the bottom third and sleek, modern glass for the upper stories. GKA"s interiors group designed the hotel"s inside, using muslin and other fabrics that call to mind Maiden Lane"s history as a place where 19th-century young women came to wash their clothes. A 19th-century-style curiosity, or wonder, cabinet in a small lounge off the lobby also recalls the area"s past.

A slim pole to the right of the building"s façade serves as a clock. As the day progresses, it slowly lights up until, at midnight, it is completely sheathed in light, which is then extinguished as the process begins anew.

Said GKA Founder and Principal Gene Kaufman, "Our goal in designing both the exterior and the interior of the Hotel Indigo was to craft a unique environment reflective of the area"s vitality, past, and present."