Downtown
Nine neighborhoods, none of them alike, all of them close. New York gets very specific below Canal Street.
WHERE WE ARE
The Financial District
You're in it
The oldest part of the city and the least understood. FiDi was a Dutch trading post before it was a stock exchange, and the street grid still follows cow paths and shorelines that stopped existing three hundred years ago. That's why nothing runs straight down here.
The reputation is suits and empty weekends. The reality now is a residential neighborhood with the best architecture in Manhattan and, on a Sunday morning, streets so quiet you can hear your own footsteps between hundred-story buildings. Stone Street handles dinner. Wall Street handles the photographs. We handle the drink after.
South Street Seaport
6 minutes on foot
Technically part of FiDi, spiritually its own place. Cobblestones, tall ships, and the old Fulton Fish Market, now the Tin Building's Jean-Georges food hall. The Seaport is where downtown remembers it was a port first.
Come for the Pier 17 rooftop in summer, the skating rink in winter, and the light on the East River any time of year. It's the closest thing we have to a backyard.
FIFTEEN MINUTES
Chinatown
15 minutes on foot, or two stops on the J/Z from Fulton Street to Canal
The largest Chinese community in the Western Hemisphere, and the most rewarding neighborhood in the city to wander without a plan. Fish on ice at eight in the morning, herbalists, hand-pulled noodles, dumpling counters where a meal costs less than a cocktail.
Go hungry and go early. Doyers Street bends for no reason anyone agrees on. The best places rarely have the best signs.
The Lower East Side
20 minutes on foot, or three stops on the J/Z from Fulton Street to Delancey
Tenements, pickles, and the loudest nights downtown. The LES has been the arrival neighborhood for a century and a half and it still has the layers to prove it: the Tenement Museum, century-old delis, Essex Market, and a bar scene that starts about the time most of the Financial District has gone to bed.
Orchard Street for shopping, Ludlow and Rivington for the night, and no reservation needed for any of it if you're willing to wait a little.
Tribeca
18 minutes on foot, or the A/C from Fulton Street to Chambers
Cast-iron warehouses that spent a century holding textiles and butter and now hold restaurants with reservations booked a month out. Tribeca is quiet, wide, and expensive in a way it doesn't feel the need to mention.
The cobblestones on Franklin and Harrison are the real thing. The film festival takes over in June. Come for dinner, stay for the walk back.
Little Italy
18 minutes on foot
A few blocks of Mulberry Street with red sauce, espresso, and pastry counters that have been in the same families for a century. The Feast of San Gennaro takes over eleven days every September.
Order the cannoli. Don't order the cannoli anywhere else.
NoLita
20 minutes on foot
North of Little Italy, hence the name, and the neighborhood that quietly took its place. Independent boutiques, small coffee, Elizabeth Street Garden, and the best low-stakes shopping downtown. Half a day, easily.
Battery Park City
16 minutes on foot
Ninety acres built on landfill from the World Trade Center excavation, which makes it the newest neighborhood downtown and the only one that was planned. It shows, in a good way: wide esplanades, actual lawns, and a river on your left the whole way.
This is where downtown goes to exhale. Rockefeller Park for families, the Irish Hunger Memorial for a moving fifteen minutes, Brookfield Place for lunch under the palm trees. The Hudson sunsets from the esplanade are the best free view in Manhattan and almost nobody who doesn't live here knows it.
A LITTLE FURTHER
SoHo
10 minutes on the A/C to Spring Street
The largest collection of cast-iron architecture in the world, which is easy to forget while shopping. Look up. The buildings above the flagships are the reason SoHo is a landmark district.
Broadway is the crowds. Greene, Mercer, and Wooster are the neighborhood. Saturday afternoon is the busiest time; Sunday morning is the right time to go.
Greenwich Village
12 minutes on the A/C to West 4th Street
Where the grid gives up. Crooked streets, brownstones, jazz clubs that have been running since the fifties, and Washington Square Park doing what it has always done, which is everything at once.
The West Village, just past Seventh Avenue, is quieter and more residential. Both are best on foot with no destination in mind.
WORTH THE BRIDGE
Dumbo & Brooklyn Heights
30 minutes on foot across the Brooklyn Bridge
Not downtown Manhattan, but the best possible reason to walk the bridge. Dumbo for the cobblestones and the Manhattan Bridge framed at the end of Washington Street. Brooklyn Heights for the Promenade, where the view of the skyline includes us.
We know these blocks.
Ask the front desk where to eat, what's open late, and which way to walk. It's the part of the job we like best.