Come in January if you can
Winter is the easiest time to have this neighborhood to yourself. The holiday crowds are gone by the first week of January, the office workers are back but they're inside all day, and the streets we walk every morning are as empty as they get. Hotel rates downtown are at their lowest of the year in January and February for the same reason. If you don't need warm weather to enjoy a city, that's a good trade.
The thing to plan around isn't the cold, it's the wind. We're on a narrow street between tall buildings, which is fine, but four blocks west at the water it's a different experience. The whole trick to a winter day down here is stitching the outdoor bits together with indoor bits, and downtown is unusually good for that.
Skate, because the season runs longer than you think
The rink at Brookfield Place, 230 Vesey Street, stays open into the first of March. That's the single most useful winter fact about this neighborhood: most people assume skating ends with the holidays and stop looking. Last season a one-hour public session ran $15 on a weekday and $17 on a weekend, with skates $5 to $7. It's outdoors on the Hudson side, so the view is water and Jersey City, and it's about a twelve-minute walk west from us.
Book a weekday session if you have the choice. Weekend afternoons are a slow lap in a crowd; a Tuesday at four is a rink with fifteen people on it.
Walk indoors on the cold days
You can get most of the way across the neighborhood without being outside for more than a couple of minutes at a time, and in February that matters more than any attraction.
The Oculus at the World Trade Center is the hinge. It's the white ribbed transit hall, it's free, it's warm, and it connects the World Trade Center subway lines and the PATH with the shops underneath. About an eight-minute walk from us. You can enter at Church Street and come out the far side near Brookfield Place.
The Winter Garden at Brookfield Place is the other one worth knowing: a glass atrium with full-size palm trees in it, on the Hudson, with seating and food nearby. In December it runs holiday programming under the palms, but the reason to know about it in February is simpler. It's a warm room with daylight and a view of the water, and nobody charges you to sit in it.
On a genuinely miserable day, we'd send you to the museums instead. There are five downtown that are worth an hour each, which is the right length of visit when your coat is wet.
The free hour on the water
The Staten Island Ferry runs 24 hours a day and costs nothing, and in winter it's better than it is in summer, because the deck crowd is gone and the cabin is heated. You get the harbor, the Statue of Liberty off the starboard side on the way out, and the Lower Manhattan skyline coming back. Whitehall Terminal is about a fifteen-minute walk south from John Street, or a couple of stops on the R or the 1. Round trip with the wait is a little over an hour.
Go at dusk in winter. Sunset is early enough in January that you can catch the skyline lighting up and still be back for dinner at a normal hour.
Eat somewhere with a short walk attached
Stone Street is the winter dinner answer, about a seven-minute walk south of us. It's a single pedestrian block of restaurants and bars with the lights strung overhead, and the point in February is that you commit to one short walk and then you're inside for the rest of the night. In summer the tables spill out onto the cobblestones; in winter everyone's packed in behind the windows, which is its own kind of good.
If you'd rather not go out at all, that's a legitimate winter plan too. Your suite has a full kitchen if you want to cook, and there's a grocery run to be done within a few blocks. We've written up where to shop separately.
What to actually pack
A hat and gloves, not just a heavier coat. Waterproof shoes, because the corners hold slush for days after a storm and every crossing has a puddle you can't judge the depth of. Layers you can strip off, since you'll be moving between February outside and an overheated subway car every twenty minutes. That's it. Nothing about a New York winter requires special equipment, just the willingness to be outside for eight minutes at a time.
Is it worth coming in winter at all?
Yes, with one caveat. If your list is entirely outdoor sightseeing, a January trip will be a compromise: the Brooklyn Bridge walk is a serious wind event and the harbor cruises run reduced schedules. If your list is a mix of eating, museums, walking short distances and having room to spread out at the end of the day, winter downtown is the best version of this neighborhood. Quieter streets, shorter lines everywhere, and a rink that's still running when everyone thinks it isn't.