• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1802 0

is left from Manhattan’s colonial era, however: apart from a precious few structures built in the 1700s, the 19th-century brick facades of South Street Seaport are about as old as it gets here. As you’ll notice immediately, the neighborhood has largely given way to the sometimes intimidating (and on weekends, seemingly deserted) skyscraper-lined canyons of the Financial District on Wall Street and lower Broadway. Bounded by the East and Hudson rivers to the east and west, respectively, and by Chambers Street and Battery Park to the north and south, this is an area you can fully and best appreciate by walking its streets.

You’ll want to see what’s here, but above all you’ll want to see what’s not, most notably in that empty but evolving gulf among skyscrapers: the World Trade Center site, known as Ground Zero.

The southern tip has often served as a microcosm for a city that offers as many first shots as it does second chances, so it’s appropriate that it’s the key point of departure for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. This experience should never be dismissed as too touristy. Like nothing else, the excursion will remind you that this is a city of immigrants and survivors.

The city’s downtown neighborhoods give you a close-up of the many cultures of Manhattan. Tucked to the west, south of Canal Street, residential TriBeCa (triangle below Canal Street) has a quieter vibe and owes some of its cred to Robert De Niro, whose investments in the area include the TriBeCa Grill and the nonprofit TriBeCa Film Center. Unlike nearby SoHo (south of Houston) and NoLIta’s (north of Little Italy) in-your-face commercial presence, TriBeCa keeps more to itself. And although TriBeCa’s money is hidden away behind grand industrial facades, you can get a taste of it at one of the posh neighborhood restaurants or when the stars turn out for the annual TriBeCa Film Festival in spring.

Chinatown, by contrast, is a living, breathing, anything-but-quiet ethnic enclave: a quarter of the city’s 400,000 Chinese residents live here above storefronts crammed with souvenir shops and restaurants serving every imaginable regional Chinese cuisine, from modest dumplings to sumptuous Hong Kong feasts. What started as a 7-block area has morphed into more than 40 blocks above and below Canal Street with tea shops, restaurants, Buddhist temples, herbalists, acupuncturists, and pungent open-air markets.

PLANNING

MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR TIME

Visit Lower Manhattan during business hours on a weekday to capture the district’s true vitality—but expect to be jostled on the crowded sidewalks if you stand still too long or walk too slowly.

On weekends you could feel like a lone explorer in a canyon of buildings in the Financial District. If you look, you can find some spots for good food and nightlife, but the neighborhood largely shuts down at night. End your visit by watching the sunset over the Hudson River.

Chinatown is lively pretty much any time of day, but more so on weekends, when there’s so much sidewalk shopping, you’ll likely have to walk in the street.

GETTING HERE AND AROUND

Many subway lines service this area. The Fulton Street/Broadway-Nassau station, serviced by nine different subway lines, puts you within walking distance of City Hall, South Street Seaport, and the World Trade Center site

If Chinatown is your downtown destination, don’t even think of driving—its cramped streets and heavy congestion make it a tough place to navigate and an even more disastrous place to park. The subway is a better idea, with the J, N, R, Q, Z, and 6 (Canal Street) and the B and D (Grand Street) all serving the area. The 1 subway line stops in the heart of TriBeCa (Franklin Street).

FODOR’S CHOICE

Brooklyn Bridge

Ellis Island

Ground Zero

Statue of Liberty

TOP EXPERIENCES

Visiting Ground Zero

Riding the Staten Island Ferry

Eating dim sum in Chinatown

Touring Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty

Snapping a photo in front of Wall Street’s bull

Strolling down TriBeCa’s Harrison Street

BEST FOR KIDS

Batter Park

Castle Clinton

South Street Seaport