The short answer
Pick the room first, then the neighborhood. With kids, the thing that decides whether a New York trip is good or grim is whether you have separate bedrooms, somewhere to make breakfast, and a block that goes quiet after 9pm. Neighborhood is the second question, not the first, and most families ask them in the wrong order.
That said, our answer is Lower Manhattan, and we'll show our working. We're on John Street in the Financial District, so treat this as a recommendation with a bias, and read the parts where we say another neighborhood is the better call.
What actually matters when you're travelling with children
- Separate sleeping space. One room with four people in it means everybody goes to bed at 8pm. A suite with a door between the bedroom and the sofa buys the adults their evening back.
- A kitchen. Not for cooking every meal. For milk in a fridge, cereal at 6am when the jet lag hits, and not paying restaurant prices for a bowl of pasta a five-year-old will half eat.
- Laundry. Day four is when this stops being optional.
- A quiet block, not just a quiet hotel. The difference between a good night and a bad one is usually the street outside, not the building.
- Something to walk to. With kids you get roughly one big outing a day. If the outing starts with 40 minutes on a train, you get less of one.
Why we'd point families downtown
The Financial District is pretty quiet on weekends and quiet most evenings, because it's an office district that goes home. That's the trade a lot of families are looking for without knowing to ask for it: you're in Manhattan, walking distance from the sights, and the street outside your window is calm at bedtime.
What's within a walk from us:
The Brooklyn Bridge. The walkway starts a few blocks from our door and drops you into DUMBO on the other side, which is about as good as a family morning gets in this city. It's flat, it takes about half an hour at kid pace, and the payoff at the far end is a park with the bridge overhead. Go early; the walkway is at its worst in the middle of a summer afternoon. We've written the whole route up as a half-day itinerary.
The Staten Island Ferry. Free, runs day and night, and passes the Statue of Liberty on the way out and back. If you have kids who like boats and a budget that doesn't like ticketed harbor cruises, this is the one. Round trip is about 50 minutes of sitting still, which is either a rest or a battle depending on the child.
Battery Park. The green edge at the bottom of the island, where the ferries to Liberty Island and Ellis Island leave from. It's free to walk through, and it's the natural place to let everyone run around before or after a ticketed thing.
The Oculus. The white ribbed hall at the World Trade Center, which is a transit station and a shopping centre and, for a certain kind of eight-year-old, a spaceship. It costs nothing to walk through and it's indoors, which matters on the day it rains.
The 9/11 Memorial. Worth thinking about before you go, not after you've arrived. The outdoor memorial pools are free and open air; the museum is ticketed and heavy going for younger children. We put the ticket and timing details on their own page so you can decide in advance.
When another neighborhood is the better call
Midtown, if your trip is built around Central Park and a Broadway show. You'll pay for the location in noise and in the price of everything within two blocks of your door, but if the park is your daily outing, being able to walk to it is worth a lot. We compare the two areas properly on our Financial District vs Midtown page.
Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO, if you'd take quiet residential streets over walkability to Manhattan sights. You get playgrounds, a slower pace and the best view of the skyline. You also get a river between you and most of what you came to see, which is fine when it's a subway ride and less fine at 4pm with a tired four-year-old.
Not Times Square. People book it because it's central and then discover their children can't sleep and the adults can't get a coffee without queueing. It's the one area we'd talk a family out of.
What to book, wherever you land
Ask for the layout, not the star rating. We don't have connecting rooms, which is the standard hotel answer to families, and we think two or three bedrooms behind one front door is a better one: everybody's in the same apartment, nobody's listening through a wall for a knock. Our suites have full kitchens, there's a laundry room in the building, and the gym and lounge are on the lower level if someone needs to burn off an hour.
Breakfast isn't included here, which is deliberate. There's coffee in the lounge, and with a kitchen upstairs most families end up doing their own first meal and saving the going out for later in the day.
Space to live in the city. That's the whole argument for staying down here with kids, and it's why we'd take a quiet block and a kitchen over a famous address every time.