By Harry Nara · Last updated
Stay in Midtown for a short first trip and the subway, SoHo or Nolita if you would rather walk out into a neighbourhood than a crowd, the Financial District for the best value left in Manhattan, Williamsburg for more room and better dinners at the cost of a river crossing, and the Upper West Side for parks, museums and a kitchen. Above Houston Street a New York address tells you almost exactly how far you will be walking. Below it, and across the river, it stops doing that.
New York hands you a measuring instrument that almost no other city does, and most visitors never find out how to read it. The numbered grid was imposed by the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, which laid out the streets above Houston Street as far as 155th, and it was drawn to a deliberate rhythm: cross-town streets sixty feet wide with blocks of about two hundred feet between them, plus fifteen wider hundred-foot streets to make up the difference. The arithmetic that falls out of it is the one number worth memorising here. Twenty of those short blocks make a mile. So an address like 57th and Sixth is not a name, it is a coordinate, and you can work out the walk from your hotel to dinner before you have booked either.
There are two places the instrument fails, and both of them decide where you should sleep. The first is direction. Avenue blocks, the ones running east to west, are nothing like street blocks: they are roughly seven hundred and fifty feet and can pass nine hundred in Midtown, which puts about seven of them in a mile rather than twenty. Ten blocks north is a half-mile stroll. Ten blocks across is closer to a mile and a half. Same number, nearly triple the walk, and it is the single most common misjudgement people make with a New York map. The second is Houston Street itself. Greenwich Village was a settled place with its own street plan long before 1811 and it kept it, which is why West 4th Street turns north and crosses West 10th, 11th and 12th. Below Houston the numbers stop describing anything, and downtown is precisely where a hotel that looked close turns out not to be.
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The best areas to stay in New York City
The subway answer, and the right default for a short first trip
Midtown
Suits: First visits, three or four nights, theatre, and anyone who would rather not plan transport
Midtown sits in the middle of the grid and in the middle of the subway, which is the entire case for it. Nearly every line in the system passes through somewhere between Times Square, Herald Square and Grand Central, so wherever you decide to go, you are one ride and usually no changes away. It is also worth defining more widely than most people do. Bryant Park, Herald Square and Midtown East are all Midtown, they are noticeably calmer than the theatre blocks, and they are inside the same walk to Central Park, the Empire State Building and the Museum of Modern Art.
On a trip of three or four nights the thing that quietly eats the days is moving around, and Midtown removes most of that. Longer than about four nights and the calculation turns over, because the premium you are paying is for convenience you are no longer short of, and you start to notice that you are sleeping in an office district. If you are here for a show, though, nothing else on this page lets you walk home afterwards.
Watch out: You are buying an interchange, not a neighbourhood. The blocks immediately around Times Square are relentless at every hour, street level is chain restaurants and crowds, and because almost nobody lives here it can feel oddly like nowhere in particular once you step off the main avenues.
- Splurge The Knickerbocker Hotel A rooftop terrace running to more than three hundred and seventy square yards of indoor and outdoor space, cocktails at St. Cloud above and a Charlie Palmer steakhouse below, in a building that stands directly on top of the Times Square–42nd Street subway station. That is the argument in one line: the address that everyone else treats as a cost is the thing you are actually buying, and Bryant Park is a few hundred feet the other way.
- Sweet spot Archer Hotel New York A rooftop bar looking straight across at the Chrysler Building and the Empire State, an American kitchen off the lobby and bicycles to borrow, a few hundred feet from Bryant Park. Sitting this far east of the theatre blocks buys a quiet night, and the walk back after a curtain is still about ten minutes.
- Budget citizenM New York Times Square Three outdoor terraces, a rooftop bar, a gym with space for yoga and food and drink served around the clock, at a nightly rate this postcode does not normally permit. Rooms are small on purpose and run off a tablet that handles the lights, blinds and temperature, and Central Park and Columbus Circle are both about five minutes on foot.
Below Houston Street, where you walk out into a neighbourhood
SoHo and Nolita
Suits: Second visits, couples, food and shopping, and anyone who wants to be somewhere rather than near everything
Houston Street is the seam in the city, and crossing south over it changes what an address means. The streets keep their names and their angles here because the older settlements were laid out long before the surveyors arrived, so you get cobbles, cast iron and a plan that has to be learned rather than calculated. What that buys is a genuine neighbourhood: Nolita, Chinatown, Little Italy, Tribeca and the West Village all begin within a fifteen-minute walk of each other, and the evening happens on the street rather than in a hotel bar.
The practical cost is that you give up the certainty Midtown sells. Lines are fewer, the walk to one is longer, and a route that looks direct on paper will bend. Set against that, this is the part of Manhattan where you can eat well without planning and where a morning spent doing nothing in particular still feels like the trip, which is why it is the area most New Yorkers would point a returning visitor towards.
Watch out: This is where the grid gives out, so budget more walking than the block count suggests and expect to actually look at a map. Subway coverage is thinner than Midtown’s, the cast-iron buildings mean stairs and small lifts more often than not, and the shopping streets on a Saturday afternoon are as dense as anything around Times Square.
- Splurge Crosby Street Hotel An inner courtyard, a drawing room with a fireplace and a private cinema that screens a film every Sunday, on a cobbled street one block from the Spring Street subway. Afternoon tea runs daily and the gym never closes. It is rated 9.4, which makes it the best-reviewed hotel on this page.
- Sweet spot Arlo SoHo A rooftop bar with a real panorama, a courtyard, a lobby bar and a market downstairs that stays open all night, with terraces on some of the rooms. Rooms are compact by design, and the position between SoHo, Tribeca and the West Village means three of the most walkable neighbourhoods in the city start at the door.
- Budget Sohotel Two restaurants and a bar downstairs, hardwood floors upstairs and a concierge desk that never shuts, a couple of hundred yards from the subway on the Nolita edge of the Bowery. Little Italy is about the same distance again, which is a lot of dinner within a short walk for what the room costs.
The best value left in Manhattan, and the quietest nights
The Financial District
Suits: Value-minded trips, weekend stays, early risers, harbour and ferry days
Downtown has the oldest street plan on the island and it shows. Wall Street, Pearl Street and Stone Street follow the Dutch and colonial town and pre-date the grid by well over a century, so the numbered-street arithmetic is no use at all down here and the lanes bend in ways that look like errors on a map. What the area does have is connections: a great many subway lines converge within a few blocks, and the harbour ferries and the Staten Island Ferry leave from the bottom of the island.
The value comes from who normally fills these rooms. Demand here is built around Monday-to-Thursday business travel, so rates soften on exactly the nights most visitors want, and a weekend downtown often costs meaningfully less than the equivalent room in Midtown. The sightseeing is unusually concentrated too, with the September 11 Memorial, Battery Park and the Brooklyn Bridge walk all starting within about fifteen minutes of each other on foot.
Watch out: It empties out after work. This is the one part of Manhattan organised around an occupation rather than a population, so weekday evenings and Sunday mornings are genuinely quiet at street level and finding a busy restaurant can mean a ten-minute walk north.
- Splurge Club Quarters Hotel World Trade Center A roof terrace, a Morton’s steakhouse on the ground floor and Nespresso machines in the rooms, roughly three hundred feet from the September 11 Memorial and about twice that from One World Trade Center. Nothing else downtown puts you quite this close to the thing most people have come to see.
- Sweet spot Artezen Hotel A terrace, a fitness centre and a desk staffed around the clock in English and Spanish, about two-thirds of a mile from the September 11 Memorial and a mile from the Brooklyn Bridge. It is rated 9.2 across nearly fifteen hundred reviews, which is the best score anywhere on the lower island.
- Budget Hotel Indigo NYC Financial District Parquet floors and walk-in showers in the rooms, a restaurant serving Dutch and American food and a bar downstairs, and a breakfast guests rate more highly than almost anything else here. The gym is included and you are paying a downtown rate for a room a Midtown hotel would charge more for.
More room and better dinners, with one river in the way
Williamsburg
Suits: Longer stays, repeat visitors, food-led trips, and anyone who wants a neighbourhood rather than a skyline
Williamsburg sits across the East River in Brooklyn with its own street plan and its own logic, and the first thing to understand is that the Manhattan skyline here is the view rather than the thing you are standing in. The waterfront faces the city, the converted industrial buildings behind it hold the restaurants, bars and music venues, and the whole area is flat and easy to walk in a way much of Manhattan is not.
The trade is simple enough to price. You get more room for the money than almost anywhere across the water, and you eat better per dollar, and you pay for both in travel time at either end of every day. On a stay of five nights or more that maths usually works. On two nights it does not, and you will spend a meaningful share of a short trip underneath the river rather than above it.
Watch out: The East River is the real distance, not the block count. Reaching Midtown is a subway ride or a ferry and about half an hour door to door, and weekend engineering work is a routine fact of the New York subway, so an evening that depends on one line is worth a second thought before you commit to it.
- Splurge Wythe Hotel Thirteen-foot timber ceilings, exposed brick and heated concrete floors across sixty-nine rooms in a converted hundred-year-old factory on the waterfront, with Le Crocodile on the ground floor and Bar Blondeau six storeys above it. The ferry across to Manhattan leaves a few minutes from the door.
- Sweet spot The Hoxton, Williamsburg Bicycles to borrow at no charge, a restaurant that runs from brunch through to dinner and a cocktail bar that fills up with people who live locally rather than people staying upstairs. Rooms are compact and express check-in means you can drop bags and be back outside within a few minutes of arriving.
- Budget Pod Brooklyn Rooms spread over four separate buildings divided by a courtyard and linked by bridges, with yoga classes, a garden and bicycles available. The subway is a few minutes on foot, and the Brooklyn Brewery and the Music Hall of Williamsburg are both inside a ten-minute walk, which covers most of an evening without transport.
Parks, museums and a kitchen, at a residential pace
The Upper West Side
Suits: Families, longer stays, museum-led trips, and anyone travelling with children
This is the grid at its most readable: numbered streets running across, Central Park closing one side and Riverside Park and the Hudson the other, with two avenues of shops and restaurants in between. It is also the area where the twenty-blocks-to-a-mile rule earns its keep, because almost everything you will do here runs north to south rather than across, so the block count genuinely does tell you how long the walk is.
What the area is really for is a certain kind of trip. The American Museum of Natural History and Lincoln Center are both inside it and the park is at the end of most streets, so a day can be built without a subway ride at all. It is also one of the few central parts of the city where rooms with kitchens are normal rather than exotic, and that single fact changes the economics of travelling with children more than anything else on this page.
Watch out: It is a long way from downtown. SoHo or the Financial District are twenty-five to thirty-five minutes away on the subway, and the evenings are neighbourhood restaurants rather than anything that runs late. For some people that is exactly the appeal and for others it ends the discussion.
- Splurge The Wallace Hotel Soundproofed rooms, a fitness centre and a concierge on a residential street a few blocks from Central Park, which together add up to the quietest night available here. It is rated 9.4 across more than eleven hundred reviews, tying it with Crosby Street as the best-reviewed hotel on this page.
- Sweet spot Hotel Beacon A kitchenette with a microwave, fridge and coffee maker in every room, and suites that add a living room with a sofa bed, which is the whole case for bringing a family up here rather than squeezing one into Midtown. It stands next door to the Beacon Theatre on Broadway, a couple of minutes from a subway station and a short walk from the American Museum of Natural History.
When to book, and what it costs you
New York prices on demand rather than weather, and the demand is remarkably predictable. Autumn and December are the expensive months and January and February are the cheap ones, with the gap between them wider than in most cities. Book around two to three months ahead for September, October and December, and about a month for the rest of the year.
The best value is usually January and February.
Prices and availability tighten most in September, October and December.
The thing to budget for separately is the tax, because New York charges more of it than most places and collects it in four pieces rather than one. The city levies a Hotel Room Occupancy Tax of 5.875 per cent, state and city sales taxes add a combined 8.875 per cent on top of that, and then there are two flat nightly charges rather than one: two dollars per room per night to the city on any room over forty dollars, and another dollar fifty per night to the state. Call it 14.75 per cent plus three dollars fifty a night, which on a three-hundred-dollar room comes to nearly forty-eight dollars a night before you have bought anything at all. The structural point is that it scales with the room rate, so unlike the flat per-person charge in Paris you cannot shrink it by dropping a star rating, and unlike London, which levies nothing at all, there is no version of a New York stay it does not apply to. Almost none of it appears in the headline price you are quoted.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which area is best for a first visit to New York?
Midtown, if the trip is three or four nights. Nearly every subway line runs through it, so you are one ride from anywhere without having to think about it, and Central Park, the Empire State Building and the theatres are all within walking distance. Aim for Bryant Park, Herald Square or Midtown East rather than the blocks immediately around Times Square, which are considerably calmer for very little extra money. If you are staying longer than about four nights, the convenience stops being worth the premium and SoHo or the Financial District start to make a better case.
Is it actually worth staying in Times Square?
Only for a specific reason, and there is one good one. The subway interchange underneath it is among the busiest in the system, so a hotel sitting on top of it genuinely does save time every single day of a short trip, and if your evenings involve the theatres you can walk home. What you are giving up is a neighbourhood: the streets are crowded around the clock, the eating is aimed at people passing through, and very few New Yorkers spend time there by choice. Two or three blocks east towards Bryant Park keeps almost all of the transport advantage and removes most of the noise.
Does the number of blocks tell me how far I am walking?
Only if you are walking north or south, and this catches out more visitors than anything else about the city. Twenty of the short numbered-street blocks make a mile, so ten of them is a comfortable half-mile. But the avenue blocks running east to west are roughly seven hundred and fifty feet and sometimes over nine hundred, which is about seven to a mile, so ten blocks in that direction is nearer a mile and a half. The same ten blocks can be a ten-minute walk or close to half an hour depending purely on which way you are facing. And below Houston Street none of it applies, because the older streets down there were never part of the 1811 grid.
Is it worth staying in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan?
It depends almost entirely on how long you are staying. Williamsburg gives you more space for the money and better restaurants per dollar than most of Manhattan, and it is a genuine neighbourhood rather than a hotel district. Against that, every trip across involves the subway or a ferry and around half an hour each way, which is a real share of a short visit. Five nights or more and it usually pays; two nights and it does not. If you want the saving without the river, the Financial District is the Manhattan version of the same trade.
How much tax is added to a New York hotel room?
Around 14.75 per cent plus three dollars fifty a night, and it is assembled from four separate charges. The city’s Hotel Room Occupancy Tax is 5.875 per cent, the combined state and city sales tax is 8.875 per cent, the city adds two dollars per room per night on any room costing more than forty dollars, and New York State adds a further one dollar fifty per night on top of that. On a three-hundred-dollar room that is close to forty-eight dollars a night. Because most of it is a percentage rather than a flat fee, it grows with the room rate, which is worth factoring in before you upgrade.
Checked against NYC Department of Finance hotel room occupancy tax, New York State sales tax rates and fees, Museum of the City of New York, The Greatest Grid. Hotel details are verified on each property’s own Booking.com listing.
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