It wasn’t until my fifith trip to New York City that I discovered the bottom tip of Manhattan, where this fabled city began.

Lower Manhattan, as defined by the Downtown Alliance, encompasses everything south of the line created by Murray Street/City Hall/Brooklyn Bridge – including the World Trade Center, Financial District, The Battery and South Street Seaport – and is bound, pleasingly on all sides by three waterfronts: Hudson River, New York Harbor and East River.

Lower Manhattan is the birthplace of New York. It’s bursting with history in famous landmarks, storied buildings and many markers bearing witness to its time as a Dutch/English/Dutch (again)/English (again) colony then first national capital of the United States.

More people live in New York City than in forty of the fifty states.

That’s 8,804,190^ throughout its five boroughs (for more details see below).

Knowing this can make the city feel like the most impenetrable destination to get to know. However, if you have the time and capacity to make multiple visits, then choosing one neighbourhood to concentrate on will help you get to know it on a personal level. They all have their own personalities and have a sense of community, which is lost on the average tourist rushing here and there and trying to ‘see it all’ in a few days.

For instance, it took me four visits before I even set foot inside Central Park. It just seemed like it needed a dedicated visit to understand it and, to that end, I took a movie location walking tour and it opened up the park for me in a very satisfying way.

For those really wanting to get under the skin of this amazing and bamboozling city, I suggest exploring Lower Manhattan first – after all this is where it all began – as it has a village feel and is eminently walkable and discoverable in only a few days.

At night, when the office blocks empty, Lower Manhattan feels like a quiet neighbourhood, while the rest of the ‘city that never sleeps’ continues its relentless and noisy trudge through to dawn.

Once you’ve experienced it, you’ll never stay anywhere else in Manhattan. If you wander away from the Financial District, you’ll find curved, interesting and definitely non-grid-like streets filled with charming old low-rise buildings and an unhurried atmosphere.

^Census 2020

Experience

Consume

Rest

This guide details all of the things The Packed Bag experienced. Please see Downtown Alliance for more.