When the Roof’s a Farm: Five New York Hotels that Grow Their Own Food
Hard as it may be to picture – especially if you’re gazing at the Empire State Building – Manhattan was once blanketed by farmland. John Rowland, the 19th-century surveyor who mapped Manhattan’s street grid, knew all about it. In his spare time he fashioned nearly 100 maps of the island’s farms.
But enough history. Manhattan farming is back, albeit on a very small scale (think planter boxes). Still, finding a Manhattan hotel that grows its own food – or at least some of it – is a lot easier than it was as recently as a year or two ago. Read more
The news last week that the New York Hilton-Midtown plans to stop offering room service later this summer was a shocker. Envisioning a big player like the 1,980-room Hilton without food-bearing, cart-pushing servers is, at first blush, like imagining a hotel without fresh towels or porters or doors that lock.
When hotel historians – hey, they’re out there somewhere — look back on 2012, they’ll say what we already know: it was, for the most part, a very good year. New York City boasts 91,500 hotel rooms – up from 90,000 in 2011. Put another way, 29 million hotel room nights were sold in New York City in 2012. 
