Anthea Gerrie Enjoys Unexpected Views Of The Empire State Building At Manhattan’s Buzzy Moxy Chelsea Hotel.
The most you can hope for from an affordable hotel in a city where prime real estate is at a premium is a safe, central location and enough room for your suitcase and yourself. What you don’t dare dream of is the best view in town – yet this is unexpectedly delivered by the Moxy Chelsea overlooking the Empire State Building.
Lit up blue during my visit in honour of the local and beloved Knicks basketball team, the monument is Manhattan personified, and made the perfect accompaniment to my margarita in the glamorous Fleur Room club on its rooftop. But you don’t have to hit the roof to enjoy the view; 75 of the 350 guest rooms also enjoy it.
Mine was not one of them, but it was one of 125 enjoying a breathtaking floor to ceiling city view; some even wrap the view around the corner. And it had the same clever design as its sister Moxy Lower East Side down the street, with horizontal hanging space making full use of the wall below the giant television screen (offering free access to streaming) and separate ablution cubicles – a loo and a good rainfall shower – tucked into their own cube of frosted glass.
The sink, in a vestibule leading to the bedroom, is lined with shelves and fitted with not only the expected hairdryer but the unexpected steamer for creased clothes potentially needed for business meetings next day. Somehow, there is also space on the compact footprint for a pull-down desk.
With less than 24 hours in town it was great, as a woman on her own, to be able to inhale New York party vibes without having to venture out into the mean streets of Manhattan – or at least not more than the five steps between the lobby and Fleur Room outside entrance.
An order of sliders was substantial enough to comprise a delicious late dinner to wash down with my very properly bartender-made cocktail. Add the window-seat view of that famous art deco NYC edifice and I was living New York, New York! Given more time I might have started with an aperitif at the Lobby Bar, dined at street level in Moxy Afterdark or discovered the 24/7 gym.
But Manhattan is all about the energy of the streets and skyscrapers, and It’s not just the Empire State Building a 10-minute stroll away, which brings the city right into the heart of the Moxy Chelsea but the Cafe d’Avignon, where breakfast items are served in a bakery open to 28th Street, enhancing your coffee and croissant with a heady and invigorating breath of street life. And this hotel is not all about Midtown, which it so conveniently sits on the edge of, but the western reaches of bohemian Chelsea.
Turn right out of the hotel, where the streets already feel fresher and greener in the Flower District, and you’ll come to the High Line, Manhattan’s gorgeous urban green space built over disused train tracks. The most rewarding walk in the city is the fully landscaped stroll overlooking rooftops all the way south to the end, where the Whitney Museum of American Art, with its scenic terrace overlooking the Hudson, is as unmissable for art buffs as New York’s Met and MoMA.
With the wonders on its doorstep and a starting room rate which can dip to £120 at weekends (in fairness, it can also go much higher, though rooms sleeping four offer friends and family savings), no wonder Moxy Chelsea is annually showered with accolades, making the US News & World Report’s Top 25 New York Hotels last year, when it also repeated its appearance over five years in the Conde Nast Readers’ Choice awards and won Tripadvisor’s 2025 Travellers’ Choice award.
Tell Me More About Staying At Moxy Chelsea
Moxy Chelsea Hotel, 105 West 28th Street (6th Ave) New York NY 10001
T: (212) 514-6699
Rooms from $189
