Hotel 31

Note: Hotel 31 now caters to long-term guests, requiring a 30-night minimum. However, if you plan to stay in the city for a while, it can be a good deal.

Situated in busy Midtown East, the two-star Hotel 31 offers simple, clean rooms and is a dependably inexpensive alternative to the pricier hotels crowding the neighborhood.

Visitors looking for boutique style should look elsewhere, as the Hotel 31 skips any pretense of being trendy. Fortunately for us, we find any hotel that still offers clean rooms with shared baths in Manhattan to be quite cool, indeed.

Rooms

The property’s 60 rooms are on the small side and many share toilets and showers. The small reception area’s fancy Victorian spirit is carried over in room aesthetics, albeit in a less grandiose key. Floors have dark wall-to-wall carpets, floral wallpaper, maroon-and-white bedspreads and old-school office phones.

Rooms feature wall-length shelving units, safes and sinks. All are equipped with television and air-conditioning, and Wi-Fi is offered for free throughout the hotel. All rooms (and public spaces) are non-smoking.

The Hotel 31’s cheapest rooms share bathrooms, which are equipped with showers and hairdryers. Free toiletries are provided to guests.

Hotel

Hotel 31 relies on cutesy, old-time New York motifs. You can expect narrow hallways, identical bellhop uniforms and caps among hotel staff and an ornate reception.

The hotel is eight stories tall and equipped with an elevator. Although 31st Street isn’t particularly busy, light sleepers may want to ask for a room on a higher floor to minimize any street noise.

Location

The Hotel 31 is located, quite appropriately, on East 31st Street between Park and Lexington Avenue. This puts you within a 10-minute walk of Grand Central Station and the Empire State Building.

The Midtown East location makes it convenient for shoppers, who will find no shortage of shops along nearby Lexington and 5th Avenues.

Transportation

Subways: The Hotel 31 is located one block away from the 33rd Street 6 Train station on Lexington Avenue.

JFK: To reach the Hotel 31 from JFK, take the AirTrain to the Howard Beach Station, then take the A train toward Manhattan to Pennsylvania Station (34th Street). Walk to the hotel (about 10-15 minutes). Conversely, take the New York Airport Service bus to Grand Central Station and walk to the hotel.

LaGuardia: From LaGuardia, we’d recommend taking the New York Airport Service bus to Grand Central Station, then walking to the hotel (about 10 minutes). Or you could simply take a taxi from the airport.

Newark: From Newark Airport, take the AirTrain to the NJ Transit station, and then any NJ Transit train into Penn Station. From there walk to the hotel (about 10-15 minutes).

Read more about airport transportation in New York.