Thinking of booking a stay at Hotel Edison New York City? Located just steps away from Times Square, the hotel is all about the location. After staying at the hotel for five days as a family of four with two teenage children, here is our Hotel Edison New York City review.
Hotel Edison New York City Review
Overview and Location of Hotel Edison New York City
Hotel Edison is located along West 47th Street, just 300 feet or 100 metres from the northern end of Times Square. If you exit out of the main entrance onto West 47th Street and make a right turn, you will be at Broadway and the red steps and the TKTS booth within a minute or two.
The hotel also has a second entrance / exit on West 46th Street. This gives you options on which side of the hotel you wish to exit from, depending on where you are going.
Avenues-wise, Hotel Edison is located between 7th and 8th Avenues.
Hotel Edison’s decor is very much steeped in the Jazz Age and infused with an art deco style. This can be seen from the design of the door entrance to the lettering of the hotel name.
In case you are wondering why it is called Hotel Edison and if it has links to the famous inventor, yes it does! Thomas Edison opened the hotel in 1931, turning on the marquee lights at the entrance of the hotel.
The main lobby of Hotel Edison can get rather crowded and busy. The hotel is popular and you will even find air crew staying at the hotel.
As you enter in by the main entrance, you will find the check-in counters straight ahead to the left.
Opposite from the check-in counters, there is a waiting area with seating. This is decorated with art deco panelling on the walls. This is also where the restrooms are located.
To access the waiting area and the toilets, you will have to flash a hotel key card (unless you are waiting for check-in and haven’t received the key card yet).
There are three food & beverage establishments at the ground floor of Hotel Edison. These are Friedmans, Bond 45 and The Rum House. More on these later.
There is also a small lobby shop selling snacks and amenities beside the waiting area. However, prices at the shop are steeper than if you were to step out of the hotel to a pharmacy to get similar items.
Hotel Edison Room Review
We had booked one room with two double beds for our stay at Hotel Edison.
We had made the room booking via Booking.com. However, due to some problems with the card, our reservation had been cancelled while we were still flying in to New York City. Thankfully, the duty manager at Hotel Edison was very professional and helpful. He was able to reinstate our booking and get us our room – much to our relief.
Access to the elevator lobby where we could go up to our room was guarded by a security staff. Guests are required to flash their key card to access the elevator lobby. This was a reassuring touch.
If you like the art deco style, you will like the elevators. However, our teenagers said it reminded them of Tokyo Disneyland’s Tower of Terror.
The room is able to accommodate up to four persons. The room door led into the room which felt rather dark. There is no central ceiling light in the room. Instead, bedside table lamps, a desk lamp and floor lamps illuminate the room.
The room comes with a flat screen TV mounted on the wall but does not have any coffee or tea making facilities.
The room was clean even though the furnishing was a bit old. There were two closets. One was beside the doorway where we could put our coats and another further into the room where we could stow away our luggage.
With four of us in the room, along with our four large pieces of luggage, it was a bit cramped.
We did appreciate the study table beside the window where we could place any items we needed.
Our room window looked out across 47th Street and into to the Morgan Stanley Global Headquarters offices.
Just a note of caution, the room has a radiator with a hot water pipe that runs beside the window. Beware not to touch the hot water pipe.
Overall, the room we stayed at in Hotel Edison was quite basic but it met our needs and our budget.
Breakfast Vouchers: Sit Down at Friedmans or Grab and Go from Bond 45
One of the best things about staying at Hotel Edison was that it came with breakfast vouchers.
This allowed us several options for breakfast without having to leave the hotel.
One of the options was to have a sit down breakfast at Friedmans. The queue for this gets long quite fast, so if you wish to go with this option, we recommend going early.
With the hotel voucher, you can choose a cooked breakfast from a breakfast menu for the special rate of $5. It is a decent option for those who wish to sit down for breakfast.
The other option is to pick up a Grab and Go breakfast from Bond 45.
Bond 45 is an Italian restaurant on the West 46th Street side of the hotel. With your breakfast vouchers from the hotel, you can head down to the basement where there is a counter for you to pick up a quick breakfast.
The Grab and Go breakfast at Bond 45 consisted of
- a choice of fruit or a croissant pastry,
- a breakfast sandwich with either a yogurt parfait or a breakfast sandwich (bacon, egg and cheese or carmalized onion, egg and cheese), and
- a choice of either orange juice or a hot coffee or tea as a beverage.
It was more than filling for breakfast and we found ourselves picking this up and returning to our room to eat it while getting ready in preparation for the rest of our day exploring New York City.
Location Location Location
What we appreciated the most about our stay at Hotel Edison was its location. From the hotel entrance, we were literally steps away from Times Square and in the middle of New York City’s Theaterland.
We had a number of Broadway shows to watch on our itinerary and it was always easy to get back to the hotel after the show. Hotel Edison is smack in the middle of the Theatre District.
Just to the left of Hotel Edison on West 47th Street is the Lena Horne Theatre and across the street is the Barrymore Theatre. Head out onto West 46th Street, immediately to the left is the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre while the Richard Rodgers Theatre is across the street.
There is a small bodega down to the left of West 47th Street. The prices here are slightly more expensive than if you were to go to the CVS two streets away at West 47th Street and Broadway.
The attractions of Times Square are all close by, including the M&Ms Times Square store and Museum of Broadway. On days when you don’t feel like having the hotel’s voucher breakfast, you can also take a walk to Margon for a Cuban breakfast.
Overall Thoughts about Hotel Edison
We enjoyed our stay at Hotel Edison. Even though the hotel’s infrastructure is showing its age (it is almost 100 years old), it still has a charm. The room that we had was rather basic but it was sufficient for our needs. We do feel that the hotel would do even better with a renovation.
We liked the service at Hotel Edison. All the service staff that we encountered were polite and friendly. Having the staff guarding the elevator lobby gave us an extra sense of security.
We also appreciated the add ons like the breakfast vouchers. These can definitely help with saving costs if you are in New York on a budget.
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