NYC Hospitality Innovator Sponsored By Heineken: The Wythe Hotel's Peter Lawrence, Encouraging Us To Wake Up In Williamsburg

You seem to know a lot about the design. Peter: “I was here from the very beginning. This project started with my business partner Jed who’s the real muscle behind it – he’s a real estate developer. He asked me if I could do anything what would I really like to do, which is a question he likes to ask people from time to time." How’d you meet? “He was my landlord at one of my restaurants. I was there for 10 years and we became good friends." You really kept the integrity of the building. These hallways are incredible. “We were really determined because when we found the building we were really in love with it but felt we might be further away from a subway station than we might be comfortable with – but our mantra the whole way through was just 'don’t fuck up the building.'"