Tribeca or SoHo: Where to Stay in Lower Manhattan

The two neighborhoods sit side by side, share the same cast-iron architecture and the same converted warehouse lofts, and are often talked about as if they were interchangeable. They are not. The choice comes down to what you want outside the door at eight in the evening.

The 60-second answer

• Choose Tribeca for quiet nights, larger rooms, families and proximity to the waterfront.
• Choose SoHo for shopping, density, nightlife and being in the middle of things.
• If you want both, stay in Tribeca and walk north: the two are ten to twelve minutes apart on foot.

What Tribeca gives you

Tribeca is residential in the evenings in a way SoHo is not. Restaurants fill up, then the streets go quiet. Buildings are low-rise for Manhattan, the light reaches the pavement, and the Hudson River Park is close enough to walk to before breakfast. For a family or for anyone who has spent the day in Midtown, that matters.

It is also where a lot of the city’s better cooking sits now, without the queue-and-mood of a SoHo opening.

What SoHo gives you

SoHo is busier, louder and better supplied with shops. Broadway and Prince Street are crowded through the weekend, and the nightlife carries later. If the point of the trip is retail, or if you want to step out of the lobby into a crowd, SoHo is the honest choice.

The walk between them

From Smyth Tribeca at 85 West Broadway, it is about twelve minutes on foot to the Spring Street end of SoHo, straight up West Broadway. That makes Tribeca a practical base for a SoHo shopping day without sleeping in the middle of it.

Who each one suits

• Families and longer stays: Tribeca, for space and quiet.
• First-time visitors who want to walk everywhere: either, though SoHo is more central to the shopping.
• Business travelers: Tribeca, for the short run to the Financial District and the easy PATH and subway connections.
• A weekend built around restaurants and bars: SoHo, if you want it loud, Tribeca if you want to sleep.

Two walks worth doing from either

From Tribeca: west to the Hudson River Park and north along the water to Pier 25, then back through the side streets. That is an hour at an easy pace and the best introduction to the neighborhood.

From SoHo: down West Broadway into Tribeca, stopping at the Oculus and Brookfield Place on the way. It is the walk that convinces most guests the two areas belong to the same trip.

Where we sit

Smyth Tribeca is on West Broadway at Chambers, which puts SoHo twelve minutes north and the Oculus eight minutes south. See our rooms and suites, or read the full Tribeca guide for what is within walking distance.

A note on rooms

Warehouse conversions dominate both neighborhoods, which means high ceilings and, in older buildings, windows that face a courtyard. Ask what the room looks onto before you book anywhere in Lower Manhattan, ourselves included. Our room pages describe each type and what it faces.