One Day in Lower Manhattan: A Route That Actually Works on Foot
By 17John Hotel ·
Quick answer
You can do Lower Manhattan properly in one day on foot, and the trick is the order. Start at the World Trade Center in the morning before the crowds, walk south through Wall Street to Stone Street for lunch, take the free Staten Island Ferry out and back from Whitehall in the middle of the afternoon for the Statue of Liberty view, then finish at South Street Seaport or on the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset. Everything here is within a mile of us on John Street, and the only thing you have to book ahead is the observatory or the 9/11 museum.
Most one-day plans for downtown fail for the same reason: they treat it like a list of sights instead of a walk. Lower Manhattan is small. From our door on John Street you can reach the World Trade Center, Wall Street, the ferry terminals and the Brooklyn Bridge on foot, and the whole day works if you go in roughly this order, north to south to east.
We wrote this the way we'd say it at the desk. Times are approximate and the walking legs are short, usually under fifteen minutes. If you're staying with us you can drop bags upstairs mid-afternoon and come back out, which is the real advantage of sleeping down here rather than commuting in from Midtown.
Two things to book before you start: One World Observatory and the 9/11 Memorial Museum both sell timed tickets, and both sell out on good-weather weekends. Everything else on this list you can walk up to.
One day, John Street to the Brooklyn Bridge
8:00am
Breakfast at La Parisienne, 9 Maiden Lane
Start early, because the World Trade Center campus is a different place before 10am. This French cafe a block south of us opens at 7:30am on weekdays and 8:00am on weekends, which makes it one of the few real breakfasts downtown at that hour. Pastry and coffee, twenty minutes, then walk.
8:45am
The 9/11 Memorial pools and the Oculus
The two pools sit in the footprints of the towers, outdoors on the plaza, and early morning is when you can actually stand at the parapet and read the names without a crowd behind you. The museum below is ticketed and separate; budget two hours if you're going in, and book the time slot in advance. When you're done, walk into the Oculus next door: it's the PATH and subway hall under a white ribbed roof, and it takes five minutes to look at properly.
10:30am
One World Observatory
This is the day's one big ticket, and if the sky is clear it's worth it. Go now rather than at sunset: the morning slots are quieter and the harbor is usually less hazy. If the cloud base is below the top of the building, skip it and spend the money on dinner instead. Nobody enjoys paying for the inside of a cloud.
12:00pm
Wall Street and the Charging Bull
Walk south and east about ten minutes. The Stock Exchange has no public tour, so this leg is about the streets rather than going inside anything: the narrow canyon of Wall Street, Trinity Church at the head of it, and the Bull, which stands in the little plaza on Broadway at Bowling Green rather than on Wall Street itself. Expect a line for a photo with it at midday. It thins out early in the morning.
12:45pm
Lunch on Stone Street
Two minutes from the Bull is a narrow cobblestone lane closed to traffic and lined end to end with restaurant tables. It's the most pleasant place to eat outside downtown and it's where we send guests more than anywhere else. On weekends Beckett's serves brunch from noon to 4pm; the rest of the block runs a normal lunch. Sit outside if the weather allows.
2:15pm
The Staten Island Ferry from Whitehall
Free, 24 hours a day, and the best Statue of Liberty view you can get without paying for a boat. Walk about ten minutes south to the Whitehall Terminal. Boats run every half hour on weekends and more often at rush hour, and the round trip takes about an hour including the walk-off and reboard on the Staten Island side. Stand on the right-hand side going out for the statue.
4:30pm
South Street Seaport
Come back up the east side of the island, fifteen minutes on foot from the ferry terminal. The Seaport is the old port district: low brick buildings, cobbles, ships tied up at the piers, and a view straight at the Brooklyn Bridge. It's the right place to sit down with a drink after five hours of walking, and it's a ten-minute walk home to John Street from there if you're staying with us.
6:30pm
The Brooklyn Bridge at dusk
If your legs are holding up, walk out onto the bridge from the Manhattan side as the light goes. You don't have to cross: twenty minutes out and back gets you past the first tower, which is where the view of the harbor and the downtown skyline opens up. Full crossing to DUMBO is about thirty minutes one way, and there are trains back.
