A trip to New York City is a never-ending choose-your-own adventure opportunity. Everything from your ride into Manhattan to your choice between street cart or world-famous restaurant is a a chance to enjoy a uniquely Big Apple experience. Your hotel is the backdrop that sets the tone for your New York story. Should you begin your tale in a chic boutique or at a respected chain?

Be a Native New Yorker at New Boutiques

If my inbox is any indication, developers are snapping up abandoned retail and office spaces and converting them into guestrooms faster than you can say “late checkout, please.” New hotels with amenities as hip as their names (you can borrow a skateboard from The Nolitan) appeal to a wannabe-urban clientele and provide a chance to live like a New Yorker for a weekend without any risk or roommate hunting.

The decor tends to be contemporary to the extreme, as much a design decision as an attempt to disguise the painfully small size of a typical room; tiny rooms seem to add authenticity to the New Yorker experience. Instead of offering state-of-the-art fitness centers, boutiques like The Library in Midtown provide guests with complimentary day passes to nearby private fitness clubs where tourists can break a sweat next to real live Manhattanites.  You won’t find a boutique hotel within 2 blocks of Central Park, but you can find properties like Hotel Giraffe boasting easy access to Chelsea. If your must-do list for your next NYC vacation includes deli bagels for breakfast and an afternoon of people watching in Union Square, check into a Manhattan boutique hotel to set the scene.

Stay as a Welcomed Guest with Familiar Names

Do your big city fantasies involve a show on Broadway and a carriage ride through Central Park? Are you more interested in Barney’s than bagels? New York City welcomes more than 40 million tourists each year, and there’s no shame in happily being one of them. Be pampered like a guest at hotel chains that long ago secured the best locations in town.

The Ritz-Carlton Central Park sits directly across the street from Central Park and a few short blocks from the most popular Midtown tourist attractions. You can’t rent a skateboard here, but you will have room to spread out in large guest rooms and views worthy of a postcard mailed home. While you certainly can grab a bagel from a deli around the corner, you can also indulge in a gourmet snack in the Club Lounge at any time of day. No one here is new to the game, so expect expert touches like a crystal ring holder beside the bathroom sink. Similarly, The Hilton New York won’t get you into the NY Sports Club, but you can host a meeting onsite; you can also hit the in-house fitness center without traveling farther than the fifth floor.

When you visit a boutique hotel in New York City, you get the feeling that you’re staying with a friend who’s showing off their new Manhattan apartment. If you’re lucky, you can imagine yourself moving in with that friend after a night or two. The big chain hotels don’t have the hip edge or the competitive pricing of the new kids on the island. Instead, they offer a sense of security that comes from staying with the people who set the standards for New York luxury in the first place.

When the Wall Street Journal announced that investor Joseph Chetrit had purchased the Hotel Chelsea in New York for $80 million, it kicked off a new chapter in the hotel’s colorful 127 year history and raised even more questions about the fate of the hotel’s last remaining links to Bohemia.

Hotel Chelsea, New York

The landmark hotel in Chelsea has been home to a long and illustrious list of famous writers, artists, actors and musicians from Mark Twain and Dylan Thomas to Bob Dylan and Madonna. Madonna even wrote a book here, and the hotel has starred in famous films like ‘Nine 1/2 Weeks’ and Andy Warhol’s ‘Chelsea Girls.’

The hotel has 125 guest rooms and 100 odd apartments for rent, but it’s also a tourist destination and offers history and art tours, and is a popular place for photo and film shoots.

But there’s another side to all the art and counterculture, which has led the hotel into a hole financially because of the cheap rent controlled apartments and the practice of letting struggling artists stay on.

A string of managers have tried to clean things up and turn it into a regular hotel, but the Bohemians have been more than a match for anyone the hotel’s owners have brought in.

Things had been especially tough for the previous manager Andrew Tilley who quit after taking the punishment for seven months. When Tilley tried to ‘fix’ Bob Dylan’s room, the tenants raised such a stink that the Dept. of Buildings stopped the hotel from making any changes.

Tilley says he and his wife found themselves subscribed to 79 magazines in different languages, and were subjected to other forms of crude humor. One manager before Tilley claimed to have been spit on, and one of the hotel executives says he was sent fish in the mail and ‘wanted’ posters with his face were plastered on the hotel.

It is this gang of cut-throat culture warriors that new owner Joseph Chetrit will be taking on. He’s made his intentions about cleaning house pretty clear, starting with the cancellation of the Palagia “orgies” – a 11 year tradition of wild parties at the hotel reportedly attended by actors, musicians and TV personalities, and of course the hotel residents.

If the new ownership can fix up the place and relocate the diehard residents, it won’t be long before the Hotel Chelsea becomes one of the top hotels in New York. The guest rooms and suites ranging from $199 to $460 offer floor-to-ceiling windows with air conditioning, cable TV and free wireless internet.

Photos – scalleja

More info: 222 W 23rd St New York NY 10011; (212) 243-3700

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Check-in and Checkout the Hotel Art

400 years ago this September, Henry Hudson sailed into what is now known as New York Harbor, and ever since, visitors have been looking for a place to stay in New York City. Here’s a few of New York’s ‘centennial club’ hotels, all of which are at least 100 years old.

The Sohotel, New York

Let’s start with a simple question – Which is New York’s oldest hotel still in business? That title belongs to the Sohotel, which has been in operation since 1805 under various names including The Worchester, The Occidental, The Pioneer and now Sohotel.

That’s a 204 year old hotel located just north of the spot where George Washington entered the Bowery with his troops and took command of the city, setting up the government of the United States on November 25, 1783.

This location in lower Manhattan off The Bowery at 341 Broome Street - with walking access to the attractions of Soho, Greenwich Village, Little Italy, China Town, and Tribeca - is pretty good even today.

The Sohotel nowadays makes a decent living as a no-frills budget hotel for students and tourists looking for reasonable accomodations in the heart of Downtown Manhattan.

The Algonquin Hotel, New York

Next question – which is the oldest NYC hotel operating under the same name? That would be The Algonquin Hotel, which opened in 1902.

Nothing much needs to be said about this famed historic hotel which has been immortalized on screen and in the literary works of Dorothy Parker and the rest of the Algonquin Round Table members.

Next up on the list is The Plaza (now the Fairmont Plaza), which opened its doors on October 1, 1907. Billed at that time as the world’s greatest hotel, The Plaza charged the exorbitant price of $2.50 per night for single rooms when it opened.  

Straddling Fifth Ave and Central Park, The Plaza is not only a traditional brunch and afternoon tea spot for New York’s socialites, but also a movie star in it’s own right – most famously featured in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.

Hotel Chelsea, New York

No list of New York hotels would be complete without honorable mention of the Chelsea Hotel - ground zero for Bohemians. The Chelsea is housed in a distinctive landmark building which dates back to 1884, first as an apartment building which opened as a hotel in 1905.

Former residents of the Chelsea include Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Dylan Thomas, Sid Vicious and many more linked to Andy Warhol’s Factory.

Another hotel which just makes the cut as a 100+ historic hotel is The Jane NYC. Originally built as a hotel for sailors with cabin-like rooms in 1908, the hotel was restored and brought back to life in late 2008 as a budget hotel offering $99 rooms.

The Jane’s claim to fame lies in the fact that in 1912, the survivors of the Titanic stayed at the hotel until the end of the American Inquiry into the ship’s sinking.  The surviving crew held a memorial service at the hotel four days after the ship sank.  

Also eligible to join New York’s exclusive centennial club is the The Hotel Wolcott (1904), which also housed one Titanic survivor – Dr. Washington Dodge of San Francisco, who then penned a harrowing first-person account of the tragedy while staying at the Wolcott. Really dodged that one, didn’t he? 

Hotel Chelsea photo by Gyrofrog (creative commons).