The Place to Stay

Hotels convey mystery and romance, variations on a theme. In the days before tourism annihilated travel, steamer trunks bore stickers with the logos and names of legendary hostelries in London, Paris, New York, Venice, Banff, Cairo, Bombay, and other ports of call. "Grand Hotel" starred Garbo and Barrymore. Oh to have been in Berlin when Grusinskaya was there. Those who spent last year in Marienbad are not the only ones to confuse present and past. The ghost of Somerset Maugham haunts Raffles in Singapore.

Top hotels define luxury. Eloise roamed the Plaza, and may still. Characters from The Great Gatsby gathered there as well. Near the beginning of the underrated movie, "Metropolitan," members of the Sally Fowler Rat Pack, the urban haute bourgeoisie, leave the Plaza to catch cabs during the Yuletide of their remnant's discontent.

Maybe we, too, can have tea sometime.

To many generations, the Waldorf-Astoria epitomized Manhattan's imposing grace. Douglas MacArthur lived in the Towers, as did, imperfect memory recalls, Madame Chiang. Great hotels boast bars and restaurants, supper clubs and elevators conducive to a futile embrace. One Sunday in 2004, strangers became friends at the King Cole Bar in the St. Regis. One nursed a post-church red snapper (known as a bloody Mary elsewhere); another relished shrimp and champagne while speaking not of yesterday but of tomorrow. He was, his stoolmate subsequently learned, a veteran of the Argonne -- that means World War I. Several months later news of his death at over 100 brought a toast of gratitude.

CASTRO STAYED in Harlem. Wits gathered at the Algonquin. The Palmer House in Chicago broadcast ballroom music to the hinterlands, and had a branch of Trader Vic's. Couples in San Francisco posed for snapshots in the Fairmount and the Mark Hopkins, where George Raft flirted with a young lady from Oregon gone to work in a big city with a Tenderloin and Nob Hill. A black-and-white photo caught her and her hometown swain in a booth at the St. Francis. She smiled and wore a feather in her hat; his homberg rested at his side and he looked 15. Yesteryear projected an elegance, which etiquette made simultaneously more subtle and more intense. We forget. We do not even know that we have forgotten. Sex appeal is not enough. Seduction cannot occur, a philosopher said, when innocence is not a virtue. Boutique hotels give the lucky masses a chance to pay top dollar to stay where a movie star threw a tantrum or where a rock idol trashed his suite.

The Cape Cod Room in Chicago's Drake serves seafood from afar. Bobby Short played at the Carlyle. A Christmas past included eve and day at New York's Elysee, fortified at the Monkey Bar. Molly Brown proved unsinkable; a palace in Denver preserves the family name. Venice's Danielli overlooks the lagoon and stands near the Bridge of Sighs. London's Savoy pours the best martini on the far side of the pond. It is possible to have a drink in the Paris Ritz, and imitate the lost. The City of Lights has small hotels with garrets that transform Jane and John into Mimi and Rodolfo. Gamblers say, Viva Las Vegas!

Richmond's Jefferson flourished, stagnated, and flourishes anew. TJ's menu features oysters from the Chesapeake. In the public rooms of the John Marshall politicians celebrated victory or mourned defeat. Redemption of the property awaits, and awaits.

Certain chains define upscale and rise to the status of world-class. New York has one of each, and plenty more. Yet the next time a trip to Manhattan beckons, consider staying not in a place appearing on a glossy magazine's best-whatever list but in a house of God.

THE DESMOND Tutu Center at The General Theological Seminary offers rooms to the public. These are not monks' cells with a cot and a basin and towels made of emeryboard but full-service rooms with all the so-called comforts, including, alas, TV. The soft sheets are welcome, however, as are the twee toiletries. After checking in, visitors enter a warren of passageways with elevators in unlikely spots. Continental breakfast is taken in the Refectory, a room vivid and vaulted, and ready, it seems, for the entrance of Elizabeth or, better yet, Thomas Cranmer, or any of his successors as archbishop of Canterbury -- or America's presiding bishop. GTS is the oldest Episcopal seminary in the United States; its grounds make the center a destination more beautiful than a tropical resort.

The facility lacks a casino, to be sure, and guests are spared a putting green. A steak house is not on site, but clients enjoy access to the school's exercise facilities. The body is a temple, after all. The Chapel of the Good Shepherd has sculptures and stained glass, choir stalls and, in the evening during terms, a sung Eucharist. Compline is not compulsory. Don't fret. Travelers do not have to be Episcopalian, either -- or, for that matter, believers. The reservations form on the Web site does not ask about faith. It wants to know only dates, name, address, credit card, and other routine items.

The center's Chelsea neighborhood falls outside Midtown. The subway is not far, unless, of course, wind and 18 degrees conspire to transform the walk from 10th Avenue to 8th into a trek worthy of Zhivago. Give your regards to Broadway from a distance, and head instead for the Village or points east or further south. Try Soho's Aquagrill for cod and whelks, or the Pearl Oyster Bar off Bleecker for chowder and pan-roasted cod, that fish again, this time with bacon and brussels sprouts. It is possible to walk to McSorley's but not advisable to walk from the shrine. Ale distorts the gait.

WISE MEN AND women do not select Gotham for pure escape; there's always Myrtle Beach for that. R&R in New York means rest and reproach. In his journals John Cheever wrote:

"As I approach my 40th birthday without having accomplished any one of the things I intended to accomplish -- without ever having achieved the deep creativity that I have worked toward all this time -- I feel that I take a minor, an obscure, a dim position that is not my destiny but that is my fault, as if I had lacked, somewhere along the line, the wit and courage to contain myself competently within the shapes at hand. I think of Leander [a Wapshot character] and all the others. It is not that they are stories of failure; that is not what is frightening. It is that they are dull annals; that they are of no import; that Leander, walking in the garden at dusk in the throes of a violent passion, is of no importance to anyone. It does not matter. It does not matter."

The passage is read in a deepening cold amid the falling light and shortly before Carnegie Hall fills its tiers with Brahms. There is no health in us, the Prayer Book used to explain. Gilead's balm, nevertheless, heals the sin-sick soul, back then and to the end. Beatitudes provide nourishment; daily canticles sate the appetite. Morning comes. The window looks upon the seminary's garden; no one is up and about. And in the quietude of dawn, before a 10:30 choral celebration at the Church of the Heavenly Rest, the little flock fears not. For where our treasure is there will our heart be also. On a January weekend in New York, there is room at a comforting inn.

Contact Todd Culbertson at (804) 649-6686 or .