I don't meet to be mean to the hotel. The employees are great and very welcoming. Nonetheless, I the hotel is not very clean, the rooms are narrow, and it smells smoke everywere. There are signs forbitting smoking but I don't believe the rule is reinforced. I believe it they can do something about the smoking and renew some of there equipments they can have better success.

I went to Richmond to run the Suntrust Richmond Marathon in November 2009. I'd been lazy about getting rooms at the downtown hotels and found this one on Google maps (the hotel doesn't have a website). While the other hotels had been charging triple digit figures with minimum 2-night stays (as reported via promotional e-mails), this place charged me less than $80 for one night. The negative reviews are curious -- I really didn't experience any of the negatives.

Pros:
--The staff are incredibly friendly.
--My room was HUGE -- it was a bedroom (complete with 4-poster bed), separate living rooom, and bathoom.
--I was right downtown, maybe 4 blocks from the starting line, and even closer to the finish.
--Parking the night before was easy -- I parked across the street, and could see my car from my room.
--The elevator is an old-style "gate" elevator. You open a door, then open the gate, close both, and off you go. It is small, but when I stayed in a hotel in Chicago that had the same elevator, it was considered "chic" and "rustic." Not sure why the negative reviews are so upset over it.
--The room was clean, and while I did detect old cigarette smells in the LOBBY, I didn't detect any in my room. Out of paranoia, I cracked a window open for fresh air, but eventually closed it because it was cold. I never did have any cigarette smell.
--The area downtown the night before the race was mixed -- there are SOME places to eat, but take a wrong turn, and you're by a check-cashing place, and a mini-mart. No biggie. I just walked the next block, and ate at the huge Hilton Sports Bar. Walked back to my room for some rest the night before the race.

Cons:
--The bed was nice and firm, which I love, but there was no fitted sheet. It was simply another topsheet tucked into the mattress, so you're between 2 topsheets. So you're not actually touching the mattress, which is nice, but the topsheet won't always stay put while you sleep.

--The heating system is the old "pipes/radiator" thing. You turn a knob to allow more/less heat into the room, and both my bedroom and living room had them. If you're unfamiliar with that, it could be problematic.

--My (huge) room was near the elevator, which was on the loud side in the morning, but since I had to be up early anyway, I really didn't mind. I don't recall being awoken by it during the night. But it's something to keep in mind if you're not wanting to get up early.

Anyway, on balance, if I run Richmond again, I'd stay in this hotel again. It's a comfortable, modest place that isn't a big-chain hotel, but it's quite nice for a short stay, and is a great value.

I am an artist and recently stayed at this hotel during a festival they had downtown....I was looking for a nice in-expensive quaint place to stay. I guess the economy had something to do with it...but I am a starving artist after all....All the hotels I called were way...( I mean "way" ), out of my price range for where I wanted to stay. I needed something close to the festival, as most of my traveling would be by foot. The little money I had wasn't going to be spent on a taxi.

This was a cool place to stay. The people were great it was close to all downtown activities and it had a great place to eat next door.

I would recommend anyone looking for a place in downtown to come this hotel. Its cool, comfortable, European style, trendy and you can not beat the price.

We chose the Massad House based on a recommendation in Lonely Planet, even though the hotel does not have a website and we weren't able to see any pictures of the property. BIG mistake. First, the good-- the front desk clerk was very friendly, and the room was pretty clean. Now, the bad-- the hotel looks like it has not been renovated for 30+ years, complete with an old fashioned elevator with 2 manual doors. Half the time someone left one of the doors open on another floor and it never arrived. Even though our room was supposedly on a non-smoking floor, there was an ashtray right outside our door and the towels (which were the size of hand towels and threadbare and scratchy), the rug, and the bedding in the room all smelled of smoke.
Also, there were a number of people walking around the hotel at all hours of the day and night that appeared to be living there. Guests have to ring a buzzer to get into the hotel, and when we returned from dinner we stood outside in the cold for 5 minutes ringing it until one of the hotel's seeming residents saw us through the window, got the clerk, and he let us in. The street was deserted at night, and it did not feel safe standing out there waiting to be buzzed in.
They advertise that they have the lowest rates in downtown Richmond, but this hotel is not worth the $96 a night they charge, and you can easily stay in a nice, clean, updated hotel for a few dollars more a night. I hate to write a negative review because as I said, it was clean and the clerk was very nice... but I really wish someone had been honest about it sooner so we hadn't wasted a night of our vacation here.