The short answer
Stay where the subway is thickest, and pick your noise level. That's the whole decision. First-time visitors almost always overestimate how much they'll walk between sights and underestimate how far apart those sights are, so the number of train lines under your hotel matters more than the neighborhood's reputation.
After that it's a question of what you want your evening to sound like. Some people want to step outside at 10pm into crowds. Others want a quiet street and a room they can actually sleep in. Neither is wrong, but booking the opposite of what you want is the single most common New York mistake.
The neighborhoods, honestly
Midtown
Closest to Broadway theaters, Rockefeller Center, the Museum of Modern Art and Grand Central. Highest nightly rates in the city, and rooms tend to be small for the money. The streets are packed at 6pm and half-dead by 11 in the office blocks. Good if your trip is mostly shows and midtown museums and you want to walk to them.
Times Square
The most convenient address for theater and the least restful place to sleep. It's bright, loud and crowded past midnight, and the food within two blocks is mostly built for people who won't come back. Fine for one or two nights around a show. Rough for a week.
SoHo, Nolita, the West Village
The nicest neighborhoods to just be in: low buildings, good restaurants, real shops. Also the priciest per square foot, and further from the classic first-timer list than the map suggests. Fewer express subway lines too. Best for a second or third visit, or a first visit that's about eating and wandering.
The Upper West and Upper East Sides
Residential, calmer, close to Central Park and the big museums. Rates are often better than Midtown. The catch is that everything downtown becomes a 30 to 40-minute train ride, and you'll be doing that ride a lot.
Lower Manhattan (Financial District and the Seaport)
The value pick, and the one we know best because we're in it. You're on top of the Fulton Center hub, which puts the A/C, J/Z, 2/3 and 4/5 lines in one building a couple of blocks from us. Times Square is about twenty minutes on the 2 or 3. What you can walk to: the 9/11 Memorial and the Oculus in around ten minutes, the Brooklyn Bridge in about ten, the Staten Island Ferry and the Statue of Liberty ferry at Battery Park in ten to fifteen, and Stone Street's restaurant block in five.
The trade-off is real and worth saying out loud. The Financial District runs on office hours. Monday through Friday it's busy, and on Saturday morning it can feel like you have the streets to yourself. If you want to walk out of your lobby into a crowd every night, stay somewhere else. If you want to sleep, cook a dinner, and be first in line at the memorial before the tour buses arrive, this is the right side of town.
A quick way to choose
| If your trip is mostly... | Stay in |
|---|---|
| Broadway shows and Midtown museums | Midtown, close to the theaters |
| Your first time, wanting to see the famous things | Lower Manhattan or Midtown South |
| Family with kids and a need for space | Lower Manhattan, in an apartment-style suite |
| Eating and wandering, no fixed list | West Village, SoHo, or Nolita |
| A week or more, cooking some meals | Lower Manhattan or the Upper West Side |
| One night around a show | Times Square, then move on |
Three things that matter more than the neighborhood
Get a room with a door you can close. If there are more than two of you, one room becomes a problem by night three. A suite with separate bedrooms and a living room costs less than two hotel rooms and keeps everyone sane.
Check what's on your block, not just your neighborhood. Downtown especially, one street is restaurants and the next is office lobbies. Look at the actual address on a map and see what's open at 8pm.
Don't rent a car. Parking is expensive and you won't use it. Everything in this guide assumes you're on foot and on the subway, which is how New York actually works.
Where we fit
We're at 17 John Street in the Financial District, and our suites are apartment-style: full kitchens, living rooms, and multi-bedroom layouts including two- and three-bedroom suites, some with a private terrace. There's a rooftop terrace with lounge chairs, a fitness center, a guest lounge and a laundry room in the building. Breakfast isn't included, but there's coffee in the lounge and a kitchen upstairs, which on a first trip means nobody has to be dressed and downstairs by a certain hour.
If you're deciding between downtown and somewhere else specifically, we've written the head-to-heads: Financial District against Midtown, against Times Square, against Tribeca, against SoHo. They're blunt about when the other neighborhood is the better choice, because sometimes it is.