#19 in Top 20 New York for Business · ★★★★★
The Knickerbocker
Times Square, rooftop Charlie Palmer boardroom — the central-Manhattan meeting hub.
Times Square, rooftop Charlie Palmer boardroom — the central-Manhattan meeting hub.
"Times Square, rooftop Charlie Palmer boardroom — the central-Manhattan meeting hub."
The Knickerbocker reopened in 2015 in the historic 1906 building at 42nd and Broadway after a $240-million renovation that returned it to luxury operating status (the building had been offices for most of the 20th century). Three hundred and thirty rooms, the upper floors with desk-grade workspace, the Charlie Palmer rooftop (St. Cloud) on the 16th floor with the only Times-Square-from-above terrace in Manhattan. The asset is the Times Square geography — the building is at the literal centre of Manhattan, with the working media-and-broadcast cluster (NBC, CNN, Reuters, Thomson Reuters, Condé Nast adjacent at One World) within walking distance. St. Cloud rooftop is the after-meeting room for the broadcast and media client — the view of Times Square at night from sixteen storeys up does part of the conversational work. The Knickerbocker is the right pick for the business trip in the broadcast-and-media cluster — the morning meeting at NBC, the afternoon at Reuters, the evening client at the rooftop. The trade-off is that the rooms are smaller than the palace-tier and the operating standard is hotel-grade rather than palace-grade — for the high-stakes positioning meeting, choose the Aman or Mandarin Oriental.
Knickerbocker Suite (one-bedroom flagship) or Skyline Suite for the upper-floor option.
Book St. Cloud rooftop for the after-meeting drink at 7pm — the corner banquette has the Times-Square-direction view. The Charlie Palmer Steak (lobby restaurant) is the working Times-Square dinner room.
The Knickerbocker sits within our broader Top 20 Hotels in New York for Business list. It scored an aggregate 9.4/10 across the three editorial criteria — competitive against the field but, on business-specific factors, the angle above is what earned its rank. For the alternatives in the same New York neighbourhood, see Times Square and adjacent. For a different city entirely, see the related lists below.
If you have already chosen the dates, our editor recommends booking the room twelve weeks ahead. The best suites with the right view orientation go first, and inventory for the popular months is quoted in months, not weeks. Suite-level rooms with private plunge pools or terraces — the ones that earn this rank — are typically the first to sell out.