The newly named New York Hilton-Midtown.

Is the hottest New York hotel amenity a new name?

Consider: In recent months Stay morphed into Night Times Square (never mind that the original Night Hotel is just two blocks away). And the Sheraton New York Hotel & Tower changed its name to Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel (never mind that it’s not all that close to Times Square).

This week comes the news that the Hilton New York is now the New York Hilton-Midtown.

The new moniker marks a return to the name founder Conrad Hilton bestowed on his fledgling property in 1963 – New York Hilton Rockefeller Center, according to hotel general manager Mark Lauer. Only it’s not quite  because Rockefeller Center and Midtown, while close, aren’t precisely synonymous. (more…)

Macy's inflatable Hello Kitty.

It’s early November, a great time to scope out a hotel room with a view of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade – for next year.

Nearly a dozen midtown hotels are blessed with rooms that overlook New York’s 2011 parade of parades replete with floats, marching bands, balloons and Santa. But prime real estate – a room that plants you eye-to-eye with Snoopy, Spiderman and Kermit the Frog – gets snapped up months before the bands strike up. You can still get a room if you’re not too picky. But it will cost you.

Parade-view rooms are sold out at the Marriott Marquis, the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers and the Manhattan in Times Square (a special parade coordinator oversees reservations at the latter two properties). (more…)

The Algonquin.

Historic hotels have their charms – the evocative architecture, the whiff of time travel, the (often) dazzling out-of-the-past guests lists. But there’s nothing charming about historic plumbing, which could be one reason the Algonquin, New York’s oldest operating hotel, is closing for four months of renovations beginning on January 1, 2012.

The news, reported in USA Today, seems a blend of surprise and what-took-them-so-long. The hotel, called the Puritan when it opened in 1902, oozes history in all the right places, namely the cozy/urbane wood-paneled lobby that still reels in an intriguing crowd, and the tile-floored Blue Bar, which opened the day Prohibition was repealed. (more…)

A renovated room at the Sheraton.

Some renovations are the hospitality equivalent of an out-patient procedure – new bed dressings, curtains, carpeting and TVs. Others are tantamount to a quadruple bypass — deep-dish metamorphoses that entail messy stuff, like ripping out showers, furnishings and climate systems.

Just shy of its 50^th birthday the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers, a member of the second camp, is in the latter stages of “the largest renovation project in the history of the hotel,” says Mark Sanders, general manager. (more…)

The 1960s exterior.

The 1,781-room Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers, a classic midtown skyscraper, is in the midst of a $150 million makeover.  And not a moment too soon from what we saw on a recent visit.

You need to think back to Mad Men days to imagine this 51-story behemoth as special, but it was. At 501 feet, it was one of the 100 tallest hotels in the world when it opened in 1962 as the Americana and loomed over its competitors as the city’s loftiest concrete-frame building of its day.

Sporting a colossal bent slab structure, it flaunted horizontal stripes of steel-frame windows and a yellow glazed brick facing, as modern and evocative as a Pan Am jet or a Cadillac’s tail fins. (more…)