Staying at a Rotterdam icon

It’s a rare privilege to stay in a storied old building in Rotterdam. Vast tracts of this city were pummelled beyond all recognition and repair in the Blitz of 1940, and even spotting something that predates World War II feels like a pleasant surprise in the Netherlands’ second-largest city.

Set back from the Nieuwe Maas River, distinguished by its red brickwork and green copper turrets, Hotel New York occupies the former headquarters of the Holland America Line, a company that started out in transatlantic passenger and cargo services before evolving into one of the globe’s leading cruise lines, known for its elegant mid-sized ships.

Although it’s now part of the Carnival Corporation, and has its head office in Seattle, Holland America retains strong connections with its motherland, and flies the Dutch flag from its vessels.

The company’s name is etched in Dutch (Holland-Amerika Lijn) on the exterior of Hotel New York, which was designed in the flamboyant Jugendstil style, a form of Art Nouveau that was all the rage in western Europe at the turn of the 20th century.

Handily, the hotel is just a few minutes walk from Rotterdam’s present-day cruise terminal, where we’ll be boarding our seven-night return cruise to Norway tomorrow.

Dubbed “The Grand Old Lady”, our hotel oozes character inside and out. Now hedged by skyscrapers on the Wilhelminapier peninsula, it first opened as a hotel in 1993 — five years after squatters briefly occupied it — and has undergone a few refurbishments, most recently in 2018.

Operated by WestCord, a Dutch-owned firm with 16 hotels in the Netherlands, it has retained fetching original features, including high ceilings and a wrought-iron stairway, while weaving in bygone touches like vintage travel trunks, posters advertising classic voyages, and even a model of an old Holland America ocean liner.

Old-fashioned key tags, instead of digital ones, are used to enter the 72 rooms, which offer modernity (think: coffee pod machines) as well as lashings of heritage. Quirky touches in our river view room — No.211 — include a marine-style searchlight, a large black-and-white wall image of Rotterdam, and a porthole in the en suite door.

Some suites spread out in the building’s former offices and boardrooms, while a pair of guest rooms are set over two floors of the turreted towers.

This hotel has its own barber shop — family-run and operating in Rotterdam since 1884 — while the convivial public areas include an intimate basement bar-restaurant and a street-level grand cafe that serves breakfast and pulls in a mixed crowd of guests and locals throughout the day and night.

There’s a terrace outside, fringed by tree-shaded riverside lawns where Rotterdammers come to lounge on deckchairs when the weather plays ball. Water taxis zip from the pier next to Hotel New York to the city centre, just across the river from Wilhelminapier.

There are ample diversions within walking distance, however, including the Foodhallen, which has more than a dozen bars and eateries serving Dutch and global fare in a converted 19th-century warehouse.

Place names on the side of the building — like Java and Borneo — evoke Rotterdam’s maritime trading past and colonial links.

Thought-provoking insights into then and now are offered at Fenix, a new museum about migration that opened in 2025 in another massive former dockside warehouse. Once owned by Holland America, the warehouse is on the south side of Katendrecht, a fast-changing old sailors’ enclave linked by the Rijnhavenbrug footbridge from Wilhelminapier.

Next to the Fenix Factory, a cosmopolitan food court and brewery, the museum is capped by The Tornado, a double-helix staircase and viewpoint fashioned by Beijing architect Ma Yansong.

The galleries below have art, installations and accounts pertaining to the global movement of people. There are stories told by those who’ve emigrated to the Netherlands, and tales from people who left these very quays to start new lives abroad (between 1873 and the 1970s, Holland America transported almost a million emigrants from Rotterdam to North America).

Some would have sailed on SS Rotterdam, a former flagship for the company, launched in the 1950s. It’s now permanently moored as a floating hotel a 20-minute walk from Fenix, at the west end of Katendrecht, and tempts you on board with a choice of food, drinks, guided tours and even escape rooms. + Steve McKenna was a guest of Holland America Line. They have not influenced this story, or read it before publication. fact file + Rooms at Hotel New York are priced from around $150. hotelnewyork.com + Holland America offers cruises around the world, including several from Rotterdam. One option is a seven-day round-trip Norwegian fjords cruise departing on April 11, 2027, priced from $2564 per person, including a Have It All Package that bundles together a drinks package, wi-fi and speciality dining and shore excursion credits. hollandamerica.com + To help plan a trip to Rotterdam and the Netherlands, see holland.com