A Playboy Pad: Manhattan Loft

THERE'S ARTISTRY IN RESIDENCE WITHIN HOTELIER TO

THE HOLLYWOOD SET JASON POMERANC'S BACHELOR

SPREAD IN DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN

Jason Pomeranc has been called the man who turned "the designer hotelier into the latest thinking-person's sex symbol." His hotels—the Hollywood Roosevelt and Thompson Beverly Hills in L.A. and New York's Thompson Lower East Side and the recently opened Smyth among them—are known for their celebrity and rock-star clien­tele: Brad and Angelina, Prince and Lenny, Lindsay Lohan et al. (Prince loved the Roosevelt so much he trans­formed the penthouse into his own vanity suite replete with murals of his visage. Courtney Love, less flat­teringly, passed out near the David Hockney-painted pool and exited by ambulance.) Pomeranc's curatorial abilities have given each of his hotels a personality of its own.

So when the hotelier, 38, moved into his fine-boned contemporary downtown New York apartment six years ago, he decided it was time, as he says, "to evolve": "I wanted to remove myself from this vacuum of having a personal 'guy' space, that whole fraternity-house mentality of male living." His home—a 3,000-square-foot loft in SoHo, as airy as a gallery, with 12-foot-high ceilings and stainless-steel elevator doors opening directly into the living area—fit the bill for his new bach­elor pad. The fourth-floor space was once the gallery of Leo Castelli, the fabled art dealer who, in the 1960s and 1970s, handled such pop art­ists as Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg. Like Pomeranc's hotels—which all feature specific photographers' works, from Steven Klein (Thompson Beverly Hills) and Guy Bourdain (Six Columbus) to John Sparagana (Smyth)—the space is about "anonymity and escap­ism," says Pomeranc. "While there are some elements that are overtly sexual," he says, "it's not just about sex; it's about mental escape." His home is an extension of his hotels. Baggage is checked at the door.