Room with a View: The Standard, New York

Room 1211, The Standard, New York City; 212-645-4646; standardhotels.com. There are 337 rooms; doubles range from $195 to $640. Room 1211, a Deluxe Corner King, is $640.

Urban sprawl meets historic preservation—tough to imagine, but the views don't lie. That stretch of green at the left corner of your window is the High Line, a 1.5-mile elevated track built in the 1930s to lift dangerous freight trains off Manhattan's streets. Abandoned since 1980, the High Line was recently rehabilitated into a lushly landscaped public park. Dotted with native plants and LED lighting, it's a paradigm of equilibrium between conservation and design. More than 700 contenders vied for the chance to re-create the structure, but few could have envisioned an 18-story hotel literally straddling the park. Needless to say, your room's mid-century Jetsons-on-a-cruise-ship decor is no accident. Echoing the High Line, the hotel feels like a throwback, a modernized version of a bygone era. Even those non-reflective windows (which have invited more than the fair share of exhibitionism) hark back to a time when the Meatpacking District was less trendy and more seedy. Talk about a fine balance . . .