Moss has recently opened its doors at 520 Fifth Avenue, with the kind of confidence new buildings rarely show now, especially in the private club landscape.
Spreading over five floors in the center of Midtown NYC, positioned with almost surgical intent right between Bryant Park, MoMa and the Rockefeller Center, this bold new club aims to be a love letter to New York. The city’s noise barely pauses outside the door, so the club simply accepts it as part of the architecture.
The club’s founders, Colleen and Hailey Brooks, have stitched their idea directly into the New York grid.
They aren’t trying to create a separate world, away from the hustle and bustle, they’re trying to edit the one we already have.
A New Formula for Urban Leisure
Moss is built around two themes the city once understood instinctively: intelligent leisure and physical culture.
Both themes sound lifted from a century ago, which is probably why they feel so bracing now. They restore a seriousness to time and body that New York quietly misplaced today.
Intelligent leisure stands for programming that doesn’t talk down to you: art, music, discussions with a pulse.
Physical culture turns daily movement into architecture, supported by two basement floors that treat wellness as a civic service more than a perk.
Architecture That Lets the City In
Kohn Pedersen Fox imagined the exterior architecture of this property with a restraint New York hasn’t seen nearly enough of.
The tall arched windows allow daylight to move freely across the rooms, so the club never slips into that familiar, private-club twilight. Fifth Avenue appears through these arches like a living diorama, always shifting, never theatrical.
Inside, Vicky Charles from Charles & Co crafted a design that avoids the trap of over-curation.
The rooms feel grown, not staged. The marble bar, pitched dramatically at the corner, supplies the single bold gesture. Everything else settles into a quiet hierarchy of wood, plaster, textiles, and small moments of hand-work. You sense the decisions rather than see them.
Art with a Viewpoint, Not a Veneer
The club’s art program, developed together with WOAH and Platform, doesn’t behave like a gallery annex. It behaves like part of the building. New and established artists hang their artworks without the usual institutional stiffness, and the works don’t pretend to transform the space. They simply support it.
On the top floor, the Symposium hosts the Rotating Walls series. Each quarter brings a new installation.
Paul Henkel curates the first round, and the selection shows a welcome lack of fear—pieces chosen for dialogue, not decoration.
Dining with a Real Daily Rhythm
The dining floors have an ease that suggests people will actually use them.
Babette opens from morning through night under Executive Chef Angela Zeng, and the food has a clarity that suits a club meant for repeat visits. The influences drift between New American, French, and East Asian without performing the fusion dance so many restaurants feel obliged to do.
Bar Babette sits above the avenue like a watchtower. Burgers, steak tartare, raw bar plates. Honest food for people who intend to return.
Lil’s turns the Steinway baby grand into a social instrument. When the room fills, the music feels like the architecture’s natural extension.
A Cultural Playground with Its Own Pulse
The top floor changes tone. Here, culture isn’t a decorative add-on. The Symposium hosts talks, small performances, and the kind of conversations that used to happen by accident in a more generous city.
There’s a wonderful library bar called Inklings, that serves a multi-course menu, complemented by delicious cocktails poured in bespoke Sophie Lou Jacobsen glassware.
On the same floor, Off The Record offers a vinyl room that’s built around a McIntosh MT-10 turntable and Meridian speakers. We’re sure someone will inevitably turn it into karaoke late at night, and the space seems ready for that kind of honesty.
Moss also adds a Games Room with billiards, poker, and classic board games. Old ideas, treated with respect.
There’s also The Broadcast, a podcast studio with real soundproofing, which occasionally doubles as a DJ booth. You’ll also find here four private rooms: the Round Table, the Print Room, the Portrait Room and Reading Room, that feel like chambers designed for actual use, not only for photo ops.
The Subterranean Heart of the Club: Bedrock Athletics
Two levels below ground hold the club’s most ambitious gesture. Bedrock Aquatics reinterprets the social bathhouse in a Midtown vocabulary. Steam, heat, cold, private spa suites, and a series of pools calibrated for contrast. The spaces are quiet without being precious, which is rare for wellness design.
Holistic consultations, IV therapy, numerous aesthetic treatments, and recovery studios add a medical clarity to the experience. You sense a team thinking seriously about longevity, not spa theatrics.
Bedrock Athletics also offers a full gym with NYU-certified trainers.
The programs rely on sports-science rather than trend cycles, which gives the whole floor a firmer footing. Reformer Pilates, strength classes, and personalized programs built with NYU Langone’s Sports Performance Center give the space academic rigor.
A pair of golf simulators and a convertible pickleball-court-slash-basketball-half-court add the city’s favorite new pastime: competition as recreation. The trainers wear Nike by design, a small detail that shows how tightly the founders want the visual narrative to hold.
What Moss Says About New York Now?
The timing says as much as the club itself. Private clubs have been drifting toward lifestyle centers for years.
Moss is simply the latest to approach the idea without apology. New Yorkers want places that support the entire daily arc: work, rest, movement, conversation, chance encounters, silence when needed.
Moss tries to offer all of that under one big roof. In a city where buildings often overpower their purpose, Moss makes a rare offer: a place that feels aware of the lives moving through it.
