Pretty good value for the most part.
I would have given it 3-1/2 stars, but that's not an option. In my book, it's a little bit closer to "very good" (four stars) than average (three). If Tripadvisor had a "good" rating, that would have been my choice. Look, it's not the Four Seasons or the W, although the pictures on the website look pretty glamorous. The lobby, ballrooms and restaurants are very, very nice. The room was pretty average, but not enough to turn me off to coming back at an attractive price. It's a decent enough business or pleasure hotel with some of the trappings of the top luxury places for a much more modest price. My deluxe king room had a great comfortable bed, a couch, a desk and wasn't cramped. Housekeeping was great. They'd jump right on it when I went down to breakfast and had it done when I got back. Very clean. And yes, pretty old. It's not one of the old hotels you run into that's really fallen into disrepair. They've kept up enough for the most part on things that really matter. A couple exceptions, though. The carpet in my room needs replacing. Very nice carpet, with a pleasant design, but it had some runs and snags. Plenty of crown molding and nice wallpaper to give it a nice feel. No granite or anything. Just Home Depot grade restroom fixtures. And whoever said deluxe rooms have a view (the website does, at any rate) must have been smoking something. From room 838, you can see a sliver of street, sides of two buildings and roof of another. My worst complaint was the electrical outlets, more than half of which didn't work. Woke up a couple mornings to uncharged phones. So that is what it is. We eventually figured out which outlets worked. Desk staff was a little stressed at Friday night check-in. Polite, but frustrated by things beyond their control (a guy demanding their immediate attention about a maintenance issue they had already dispatched a handyman to, they were out of breakfast coupons, and their ballpoint pens all seemed not to work) Everyone we encountered was polite and smiling. If they offer a breakfast deal like the one I got ("free!" breakfast for two, at a rate about $20 over the best available deal without) I'd recommend it. The breakfast isn't like brunch at the country club. No shrimp, prime rib or anything like that, but it's a huge step up from a continental breakfast. Hot, very fresh eggs, bacon and sausage, wonderful potatoes with other veggies mixed in, lots of fruit, berries, steel cut oatmeal, one of those waffle-maker deals, with OJ and coffee included. Fantastic way to start the day. For a little over a hundred bucks a night, just a block from Boston Common and a half block from the subway, I'd come back for sure.