I don't remember what I paid in the 1980s but it couldn't have been that much. That's because my new wife and I didn't have a lot of money back then and everything we did in NYC was on a tight budget. That's why we chose to walk 30 blocks at a time rather than take a cab! Even the shows we saw were matinee performances. At night, we'd walk around Times Square and people watch, while getting 99 cent slices of pizza and hot dogs.
I forget the hotel we stayed at but it was something along the lines of a Best Western. There were mice. But we didn't care, we were in our mid-20s and the whole trip was an adventure for us.