Bearable but NOT pleasant!
I would advise anyone to stay here ONLY if you are absolutely desperate for a room. I stayed at the Hotel Penn on December 8, 2012, for ONE night (thank God). The hotel is sorely in need of renovations - TOTAL renovation of the rooms, from top to bottom. The price was right and as everyone knows, the location is awesome, but those two amenities do not make up for the shabbiness of the upstairs interior. Crumbs and all sorts of debris littered the hallway to our room, which gave me a sinking feeling as we got closer to our room number. The doors to the rooms are the strangest doors I've ever seen in my life. Our mattresses were awful and made LOUD noises everytime we moved! We had 2 or 3 connecting doors and a creepy, dark closet behind one of them. The bathroom was in the worst condition I've ever seen in a hotel/motel - very old fixtures, in fact, the shower fixtures were almost coming out of the wall. The tiles were beyond the possibility of a cleaning - they would have to be totally replaced. I can say that the sheets on the beds were clean, but that's about it! I would not stay at the Hotel Penn unless I had no other choice - and you always have another choice in NYC.