Completely misleading. Inn with an attached hotel!
First of all ... to call this place an Inn is a total misnomer. I booked a room here after walking past the Morrison Clark on several trips to the convention center in the past. Normally I stay at the Willard or the Crown Plaza Hamilton when in DC. But this inn looked so charming the last time I walked past it ... I decided to stay there this time and save some money from the normal hotels I was at. It seemed so vintage and cozy from the outside each time I passed it, I couldn't wait to actually stay here.
They should call this the 'Morrison-Clark Inn with a large attached hotel behind it' because MOST of the rooms that are sold at this 'Inn' are actually in the connecting hotel behind it. I felt very misled by the room situation ... I thought all the rooms were actually in the main Inn ... the red brick building you see from the street. In fact this is not the case.
I was given my key and instructed to go to the elevator next to the check in desk. Elevator? Why would I need that? When I looked at my folder, it said I was on a higher floor. Higher floor? The inn only had two stories from the outside. wtf? Surely enough, I stepped into the elevator and went up and it was like I was transported from a charming inn from the late 1800s to a shabby hotel from the 1930s when the doors opened.
My HOTEL room was probably the smallest hotel room I have ever stayed in. It was smaller than some of the budget hotel rooms I stayed in earlier on in my business career while on a travel budget in NYC. It was smaller than a lot of the older hotel rooms even in Europe I stayed in, which is really saying something. The furnishings were nice enough ... but there seemed to be way too many things in the small space making it hard to walk around the cruise ship sized room.
I opened the windows and the view was terrible. There was a neon lit outside coridor thing next to my room where people could easily see into my room if I didn't close the drapes. My view from a high floor included several other buildings with a very industrial feel. I didn't feel like I was in DC, I felt more like I was in downtown Newark.
The room was dark and the lighting was sparse. There were some small recessed type lights in the molding over the bed, kind of like you'd expect to find on a cruise ship. There was a desk lamp and a table lamp next to the bed. The paint in the room was a darker brown, so it really made the room dark and gloomy. I had NOT expected to be staying in an old tower-type hotel ... so I decided I would go downstairs to the Inn section and have a few drinks to take the sting away from my tiny hotel room.
9:30 p.m. ... bar was closed on a Friday. They suggested I walk a few blocks down the street and go to their 'sister hotel' where they had a bar. You've got to be kidding me.
The Morrison-Clark HOTEL (I will not call this an Inn) is located in a somewhat uncomfortable part of town. It certainly is not a far walk to 14th street and the hussle and bussle of the tourist part of the city during the day. At night ... you might not exactly feel comfortable walking back to the hotel through empty streets with the occasional homeless person. It is in the city across from the Convention Center ... but most everything is closed after dark around it. I certainly wouldn't want to walk through the streets in this area maybe 4-5 blocks from 'civilization' with a family after dark. There is a small (smallest I've ever seen) CVS across the street that stays open later.
To get to the White House/Smithsonian museums is about a 20 minute walk. If you are not familiar with the city, it will take you a couple times to get used to the walk but it is relatively easy to find your way around if you are comfortable reading maps or navigating a grid type of city. Certainly walkable and maybe worth the $50 or so bucks you will save by staying a few blocks outside the action if you are a budget traveler who doesn't want to stay outside the city and take the subway every day.
Perhaps the biggest dissapointment is the fact that I specifically booked this stay vs. my normal places so I could stay at a 'Historic Inn' in DC and I believe this was misrepresented as being a historic inn because most of the rooms are in the connected hotel. For this reason I would never stay here again and tell everyone else the same thing. You will pay $35 for parking and it is valet only, which is ridiculous considering the garage is actually in the basement of the hotel and the valet attendend pretty much drives the car 15 feet to the side of the building and down into the garage.
If you want a cheap place to stay in DC which is a bit out of the way but walkable to the main sites ... this isn't a bad deal. I paid $120 for a Friday in the summer, which in DC was about $80 less than the Crown Plaza Hamilton a few blocks over. But ... be warned ... don't expect to stay in a little inn. It is more like a hotel, unless you are given one of the fewer rooms in the main inn. The standard room is small ... two people would be bumping into each other nevermind a family.
Also, $20 for a small (half the size of a normal one) bottle of wine in the honor bar is crazy, especially when you can't get a glass of wine and sit on the front porch area after 9 p.m. on a Friday.
Again, this hotel should be ashamed for the the way they describe the rooms on the website, making it seem like a quaint inn vs. a semi-run down hotel. Or at least give people the option to choose if they want to stay in the Inn vs. the Hotel section. Also, the check in staff is small (and international) and its not always the service you'd expect from a hotel because they are overextended.