Pick the block first
On a solo trip the neighborhood does more work than the room does. You'll be coming home alone at night, you'll be deciding at 8 PM whether it's worth going back out, and nobody else is there to split a cab or hold a table. So the three things to check, in this order: how far to a real subway hub, whether there's a grocery store open when you get back, and how you physically get in the door after midnight.
We're going to make the case for Lower Manhattan, since that's where we are. But the test holds anywhere in the city, and you should run it on whatever you're looking at.
Why downtown works on your own
Because of the trains, mostly. Fulton Center is a few minutes' walk from our door on John Street and it puts the A, C, J, Z, 2, 3, 4 and 5 into one station, which means almost nowhere in Manhattan or Brooklyn is a two-transfer trip. The PATH to New Jersey leaves from the Oculus at the World Trade Center, about eight minutes west. When you're on your own and it's raining, the number of transfers is the whole quality of the day.
The second reason is the one people don't expect: the Financial District goes quiet. The offices empty at six and the weekend is genuinely calm down here. That's a downside if you want noise outside your window, and it's a real advantage if you're sleeping alone in a strange city and would like to actually sleep. The trade-off is that fewer lunch counters open on a Sunday, so know where your groceries are before Saturday night.
Third, the walking. Battery Park is fifteen minutes south, the Brooklyn Bridge entrance is about ten minutes northeast, and the 9/11 Memorial is around eight minutes west. Solo days are made of walks you can abandon halfway through, and down here you can.
The room: get a studio with a kitchen
One person does not need three bedrooms, but one person does need a kitchen, and this is the thing we'd push hardest. Our studios run from 340 to 485 sq ft and every one has a fully equipped kitchen, with kitchenware and a coffee maker included. What that changes on a solo trip is not really money, though it is money. It's that eating alone in restaurants three times a day gets old around day four, and having the option to buy a rotisserie chicken and eat it on your own sofa at 9 PM is the thing that makes a long solo stay feel livable rather than endured.
The other part is having a table. Most hotel rooms give one person a bed and a chair. If you're working, journalling, planning tomorrow or just not wanting to sit on a duvet all evening, floor space is the amenity. Room to stretch out.
The logistics that actually matter alone
Getting in. Check-in here is self-service through a smart lock and keypad, and we send the instructions the day before you arrive. No one is waiting up for you and no one needs to be. Check-in is after 4:00 PM, check-out is by 11:00 AM, and late check-out to 1:00 PM is $100 when we have it available.
Your bags on the last day. Luggage storage in the lobby is free and available around the clock, on your arrival day and your departure day. On a solo trip this is the single most useful thing in the building, because there's nobody to sit with the suitcases while you go do the last thing.
Laundry. There's a laundry room in the building that's free for guests, detergent pods included, and some apartments have a washer and dryer in the unit. Pack for five days, stay for twelve.
Working out and not being in your room. There's a fitness center and a guest lounge on the lower level, which is somewhere to sit that isn't the apartment and isn't a coffee shop where you have to keep buying things.
Wifi. Included throughout, with the login details at check-in.
Eating alone without it being grim
The counter is your friend. Stone Street, a cobblestone block of restaurants about five minutes south of us, is the easiest place down here to eat by yourself without feeling parked at a two-top, because in warm months the whole street is outdoor tables and nobody is keeping track of who came with whom. Chinatown is roughly fifteen minutes north on foot, and dim sum is the most forgiving solo meal in the city: you order three things, you're done in thirty minutes, and nobody asks if you're waiting for someone.
What we'd tell a first-timer doing this alone
Give yourself one anchor a day and let the rest fall where it falls. Two museums and a booked dinner is somebody else's holiday. And make the hour between getting back and going to sleep good: that's the part of a solo trip a hotel room usually gets wrong, and the part a kitchen and a sofa fix.