The Standard Highline – deep in the Meatpacking District of New York – has everything a top shelf, Manhattan Hotel must possess. It boasts both a gourmet restaurant and a drinking hole/pub style spot. There’s a lounge to grab a coffee, and an aspirational mixology bar. There are rooms with a view and suites for the high rollers.
However, it also has the one trait that can make a stay in New York accommodations miserable — the self-obsessed knowledge that it is indeed a Manhattan hotel.
During a recent stay, I found a hotel that has a lot going for it — including location and interior design. But, it’s higher end staffers couldn’t get out of their own way long enough to function the way the humans running a hotel must.
Outwardly, the Standard Highline is ugly as a deadly sin. Essentially two, flat concrete and glass slabs that look like a radiator heating the Hudson River. Inside, the designers went for dark, moody and modern — which works with the majority of the decor you see in 21st Century Manhattan.
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The rooms small and predominantly simple — especially when you consider they can run to $700 per night. The furniture was surprisingly uncomfortable — perhaps because you’re expected to be out there at The Met or MOMA and not sitting in your room.
The views Uptown were impressive. The food was adequate. The drinks were only as ridiculously expensive as you should expect in New York. The problem was the consensus attitude of the people running a lot of those offerings. Amongst many New Yorkers, there is the ever-present attitude that anything NYC is superior simply because it exists between the rivers — with Brooklyn thrown in as another self-appointed region of exclusive wonderfulness. I get that. I like New York and have nothing against that attitude — until it takes the form of “take it or leave it” service.
When reviewing a hotel, I poke and probe the edges of the service — especially at the middle management area. In every instance along the Highline, the attitude was, “We’re New York. We’re The Standard. Sorry, but deal with it.” I suppose that works for them, as the hotel was bustling during my stay. But, I won’t recommend the joint in favor of countless other options across town.
The two high points for the Highline’s service were tallied by some of the hotel’s least glamorous employees. The front desk staff remained courteous and helpful — even when they didn’t necessarily have the answers I needed. That’s no meager feat when you consider the front desk staffers at a New York hotel not only have to put up with weary and often demanding, well off tourists — but also the dreaded mix of New Yorkers (from the ball breakers to the whiney hipsters). As, Kipling wrote, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, / you’ll be a Man, my son!” (Or, perhaps a woman, in this case.)
Back at The Standard, the cleaning crew — the hardworking men and women who renew your room while you’re out enjoying the city — were committed, polite and attentive, even when asked for additional assistance. The Standard Highline would be a much better hotel if the people closer to the top were as effective and positive as the people a little farther down the operation’s food chain.
