Mad Men Tour of Midtown Manhattan

7. New York Hilton Midtown

New York, NY

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You can probably see why this section of Sixth Avenue in the West 50s is known as "Skyscraper Row," and the New York Hilton Midtown fits in perfectly with the neighborhood, even if it is in stark contrast with the grand, old hotels next to Central Park. There is a reason that the old-fashioned Madison Avenue executives in "Mad Men" chose hotels like the Pierre and the Sherry-Netherland over this Hilton, even though it has been here since 1963: this is a practical, convenient spot to stay while you vacation in New York, but not an old-fashioned, luxury property that is full of history and prestige. In the episode "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency," Conrad Hilton himself chooses the Presidential Suite at the Hilton-owned Waldorf-Astoria over this property, which was relatively new at the time. While it does not have the history of the Waldorf or the Plaza this Hilton does have the distinction of being the largest in New York City with over 2100 rooms with the hotel's 47 floors. It also has a location that is undeniably amazing, with Rockefeller Center, Times Square, Central Park and countless landmarks within easy walking distance. However, that is still a lot of space to fill, and Conrad Hilton is struggling with ideas about how to advertise this property when he summons Don from a rather ill-fated office party. Hilton is considering using a cartoon mouse to advertise the Rockefeller Center hotel, and after being pried for his opinion Don wisely states that it is not a good idea to associate a mouse with a hotel. Conrad Hilton was born in 1887, and would probably have trouble predicting the surge of tourism that New York would see in the 21st century. When that episode took place in 1963, the city was at the precipice of a dark period of high crime and a poor reputation as a place to visit or live. "Mad Men" shows the changes to society and the world at large through the prism of the insular, privileged world of Madison Avenue, and it also deals with the local changes that New Yorkers saw at the time. While the changes of the era were drastic, it would have been even less likely that the characters in "Mad Men" would have predicted the plummeting crime rates of the 1990s and the city's ongoing tourism renaissance. These days, the New York Midtown Hilton likely has no trouble finding guests for its thousands of rooms, with the city receiving well over 50 million visitors each year. The several other outsized Hilton hotels in the area probably do more than decent business as well. [Photo credit: Noah Axelrod]