Great Location
My wife and I have stayed at the Lucerne Hotel on visits to New York – sometimes once or twice per year – for almost ten years now.
The location is great! It’s on the Upper West Side – a two minute walk to the subway, minutes to the Museum of Natural History and Central Park. It’s far from the zaniness and congestion of Times Square, but you can get there in ten minutes by taking that subway down the street. There are plenty of restaurants near by. The Upper West Side is where people live and you encounter them daily just stepping out of the hotel – so one gets a feel of New York living; which you don’t get in the Times Square area. Take a walk also to Riverside Park by the Hudson River – it’s beautiful there too!
The hotel itself is clean, the staff and doormen friendly. The area around the hotel is also safe. The rooms can vary – but all are reasonably large for New York. If you take the King size bed room you are kind of isolated from adjacent and hallway room noises. If you take a Queen size bed room you may hear noise. This happened to me – when the people in the adjacent room started taking showers and talking around 3 AM. So sleep can be a problem.
The rates at Lucerne have always gone up over the years. Therefore we have started to look for alternative lodging, particularly because we like to spend at least 5-6 days in New York.