up at the old hotel; Ian Schrager teams up with Julian Schnabel to reinvent a New York legend.

Byline: Eve Macsweeney

On a warm July day, the hard hats are still on outside the Gramercy Park Hotel, Ian Schra_ger's

much-anticipated makeover of the New York landmark. But inside, jackhammers of another variety are going full tilt, and the levels of power, testosterone, and blue-chip- art stock are off the scale. Peter Brandt and Aby Rosen, Schrager's partner in the venture, have just been in to discuss the placement of loans from their personal collections: Basquiats, Warhols, and Twomblys. The artist Julian Schnabel, in shorts and flip-flops, is directing traffic in the shape of chairs, tables, couches, and his own oversize paintings, much like a conductor in front of an orchestra. The high-energy Schrager is covering all areas, looking simultaneously thrilled and frenetic. "I want the two Picassos here and here," he says, pumping his arms in opposite directions. And Douglas Keeve, the documentary filmmaker, who happens to be shooting a movie about the Gramercy Park Hotel, has been weaving between everybody all day and enjoying what he describes as "Ian's kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm."

Whatever people are expecting from the formerly half-sleazy, half-glamorous, exceptionally situated New York venue where Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant were once known to hang out-as well as from the inventor of the hip hotel-they're probably in for a shock. Apart from the ultraminimal, glass-fronted, skinny slice of an apartment block that architect John Pawson has wedged into a former car park at the side of the hotel, there is barely a modernist line in sight. The color scheme in the rooms, the double-height lobby, and two adjoining bars is apple-green, mid-blue, and dusty-pink. The furniture is velvet, fringed, and tufted, with giant, traditional hearths and decorative carpets. The effect is Venetian palazzo meets grand hotel-

everything the boutique version sought to overthrow.

"There's no such thing as hip anymore," raps out Schrager in his rasping staccato. "If you do hip, ...