THENEWYORKER,M AY4, 2020 13
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FREEROOMDEPT.
ATYOUR SERVICE
T
he New York Four Seasons is not
the most welcoming hotel, archi-
tecturally speaking. Designed by I. M.
Pei and situated on East Fifty-seventh
Street, between Madison and Park, it
greets visitors with an intimidating slab
of limestone façade and a metal aw-
ning that seems to want to clobber you.
Reviewing the building in the Times
when it opened, in 1993, Paul Gold-
berger was taken by “a reception desk
that looks like a Judgment Day plat-
form.” Rooms now start at twelve hun-
dred and ninety-five dollars. Or they
did, two months ago.
Like so many businesses, the Four
Seasons closed in March. On April 2nd
it reopened, transformed into the city’s
cheapest and most civic-minded hotel—
the first to host health-care workers free
of charge. As of last week, there were a
hundred and sixty such guests, sleep-
ing, showering, and enjoying grab-
and-go meals between long shifts of at-
tempting to save the lives of Covid-
patients. All are screened each time they
enter the hotel, which is now using its
more human-scaled entrance on East
Fifty-eighth Street. Nurses take tem-
peratures and run through checklists of
symptoms before people are admitted
to the “green zone” (or banished to the
“red zone” for possible off-site treat-
ment). Videos provided by the Four
Seasons show that the lobby’s usual
cadre of super-attentive valets, bellhops,
and concierges has been replaced by im-
passive metal stanchions, green direc-
tional arrows, and yellow crime-scene
tape to enforce social distancing, al-
though the onyx, marble, and soaring
ceilings remain.
“It’s basically hospital housing, but
Four Seasons-style,” explained Dr. Dara
Kass, an E.R. physician at ColumbiaUniversity Medical Center, speaking on
the phone from her eighth-floor room.
“You know why you’re here when you
walk into the building,” she said, de-
scribing the lobby’s vibe as “purpose-
ful.” But, she added, “the bed itself is
still a Four Seasons bed.” Like many
guests, she was keeping away from home
so as not to expose her family to the
virus; Kass has a son with a compro-
mised immune system due to a liver
transplant. “This room was really a god-
send,” she said. “I have so many doctor
friends who are living in their base-
ments, or a closet. I have friends who
have rented Airbnbs. I have a friend
who rented an R.V. She and her hus-
band are both E.R. doctors, and their
daughter had a liver transplant like my
son did, so they moved to the R.V. in
the driveway and their au pair is living
with the children inside the house.”
Another hotel guest is Hallie Bur-
nett, a nurse from Houston who had
volunteered for New York duty. She
flew in without knowing how she’d be
accommodated, so it was a nice surprise,
she said, when she heard, upon land-
ing, that the Four Seasons had a room
for her. She found many of the usual
amenities—fancy shampoo, body wash,
zillion-thread-count sheets—but also
some more of-the-moment ones: “Big
things of hand sanitizer, paper towels,
disinfectant, gloves, biohazard bags to
put our scrubs in as we walk in the door.”
There is no housekeeping, let alone
turndown service, but Burnett said that
guests can leave bags of dirty towels and
linens out in the hallway for pickup, re-
ducing the number of interactions be-
tween guests and staff. (According to a
spokesperson, the hotel has roughly a
hundred employees still on the job, down
from its usual five hundred.)
The New York Four Seasons took
this mission on at the prompting of its
owner, Ty Warner, the Beanie Baby
mogul. Rudy Tauscher, the hotel’s gen-
eral manager, organized the operational
changes—effected in a mere five days—
with the help of International SOS, a
medical and travel-security consultancy.
A German native, Tauscher has been
working in New York hospitality for
more than twenty years. On 9/11, he
was managing the Trump International
Hotel and Tower, which took in guests
who had been working in the World(No spoilers, but the mission involved
double-sided tape.)
On a recent Monday, on Instagram
Live, he held the first of a series of
I.S.R.U. “office hours,” a conversation
with his followers which, he felt, had
philosophical potential. “The shiny part
of this time is that it’s allowing me to
take a little pause and confront the ex-
istential abyss and see what I want to do
with my life,” he said. “The dark side is
that I have all this time to confront the
existential abyss and think about what
I’m going to do with my life.” Wearing
a faded blue chore coat, AirPods now
tucked securely in ears, he scanned que-
ries on a laptop. “How can I intern for
you?” he read aloud. “Great question.”
He pushed his glasses up and hesitated,
his gaze drifting toward the scroll of
real-time comments bubbling up on his
iPhone screen. (From @naseba._: “Do
you need to be talented to make art?”;
from @jaypooleyjay: “If you ever moved
to Canada would you adopt the superior
Robertson screw system?”) Sachs re-
turned to the question: “How do you
join the studio? The best way to join us
is right now. Immediately. Do the re-
search. Read the books we all read in the
studio. The one I’d recommend this week
is ‘Endurance,’ by Alfred Lansing. It’s
appropriate for this time. Required read-
ing.” (@e_fish007: “I’m on it!”)
Sachs read another: “What’s your
go-to brand of spray paint?” Easy: “I’m
really frustrated with Krylon, because
you can’t change the tips, but Montana
has some great colors,” he said. Then,
“What’s the museum with the best cura-
tion of contemporary art?” He paused.
“I would highly recommend the Donald
Judd show at the Museum of Modern
Art, curated by Ann Temkin,” he finally
said. (@cooper_clementine: “Do you
smoke weed?”) “I hope it stays open for
a little longer after the apocalypse, be-
cause then we can all go and see it and
have a session about it.” (@cooperclem-
entine: “Are you microdosing rn?”)
Next: “Is it advised to maintain a
schedule or routine during an isolated
creation?” He rubbed his head. “You can
go as hard as you can, but life’s a mara-
thon. Schedule in some fun, schedule rec-
reation, observe weekends.” (@cooper
clementine: “Mushrooms? Acid? DMT?”)
Sachs went on, “I don’t believe in alarm
clocks, but I live and die by the calen-
dar. So that means going to sleep early,
and getting up early, with the sun.” His
eyes wandered toward the screen. The
questions were still coming.
—Naomi Fry