Absolutely Brutal
Let me preface this review by stating that I spend 4 out of 7 days of my average week at a hotel, mostly Marriott or Hilton brands and have a very solid criteria for judging properties. I chose the Renaissance 57 based on its location and expecting proper Marriott level quality while on one of several apartment-search trips to NY, a city that I am quite familiar with. This hotel is a brutal disappointment in every way spare some good service. Let me begin. The building is ancient, charm aside it is in dire need of renovation. The room wound up being a postage size dog kennel smaller than most rooms that I've encountered in Paris or Rome. The arrangement of the furniture was such that the bed stole the entire room with minimal crawl space around it. There was a gaping hole in the top frame of the window that took massive effort to close. Once closed the street noise from the traffic and construction across the street that started promptly at 7 AM eliminating any option of sleep decreased from horrific to irritating. Speaking of sleep, the mattress and its lovely U shape probably created by years of abuse was "resolved" by a piece of plywood placed between it and the box spring. Well that certainly rendered the box spring useless creating a back breaking disaster. Let's talk about the bathroom and its faucet handle that refused to stay "on" or the door that would not close helping the lovely toilet noises escape in stereo. Speaking of escaping, when one did want to escape outside the elevator and its inability to maintain the light on the button to actually let you know that it was coming took an ungodly long time to get there. In case you didn't want to escape and watch TV it was a game of roulette to see of the TV channel actually stayed on for more than a minute or cut out. I've never seen the TV feed just drop. Finally, let me tell you about the "included" breakfast: how on earth does one find a crappy stale bagel and lox in New York? They find it here at the Renaissance 57 and they get it from a nasty waiter with a turquoise fake Bulgari watch who after following me across the entire floor with a glass of tomato juice gave me the most evil eye after I took off my jacket and spilled it out of his hand failing to use the eyes that were in the back of my head. This is a terrible hotel people. There are so many better choices that one can select from in New York, no one should ever stay here. Wait! What is that smell again? It's the cigarette smoke that keeps creeping into my room. Yeah, cigarette smoke. This is the worst hotel I've ever seem in New York and it cost me 120,000 Marriott Reward points to spend 4 horrible nights here. Shame on you Renaissance 57.