A last look at the old sign.

Anyone who has seen the movie Taxi Driver knows that Times Square wasn’t always a desirable location for a hotel. But that was a long time ago. Now even hotels that aren’t all that close to Times Square are adding the spot-where-the-New-Year’s-Eve-ball-drops to their name.

The latest Times Square pretender is the Sheraton New York Hotel, which today augmented its name to become the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel – even though the hotel is ten blocks north of the Times Square’s throbbing heart, where Broadway, Seventh Avenue and 42^nd Street meet.

At least you can see Times Square from the Sheraton.  The same cannot be said for the TRYP New York Times Square South, which is a lot closer to Madison Square Garden and Penn Station than Times Square. (more…)

Yotel's Yobot -- $2 per bag.

We’ll never know the identity of the enterprising employee who cleared his throat, stared down a guest and was remunerated for carrying a bag. But by the 1820s tipping the porter, like signing the register, was a ritual at hotels in New York and other big American cities.

Blame it on the buildings. Carrying bags wasn’t a problem for guests staying at small, squat colonial inns and taverns. But hotel architecture changed in the 1790s, with the advent of full-fledged hotels with complicated floor plans, writes A.K. Sandoval-Strausz in Hotel, An American History, a fascinating look at the evolution of the hotel. (more…)