Williamsburg, Across the River

The trouble with staying in Manhattan is that you cannot see it. Cross the East River from the Lower East Side to Williamsburg and the skyline is laid out along the far bank, and every hotel roof in the neighbourhood is pointed at it.

We lived on Wythe Avenue, so its hotels were our neighbours: three within a block of one another, at 80, 96 and 97, and The William Vale a short walk away on North 12th Street. Two of them we stayed in anyway, as staycations, which is a hard test for a hotel when home is down the street. The L train from Bedford Avenue is there for the evenings when Manhattan wins. The rest of the time, Manhattan is the view.

Wythe Avenue

The Wythe Hotel, at number 80, was built in 1901 as a cooperage and later made textiles. When Morris Adjmi Architects turned it into a hotel of 69 rooms in 2012, they kept the evidence: the original pine beams, and metal tracks that still cross the lobby ceiling with nothing left to carry. Le Crocodile, a French brasserie, serves downstairs. Bar Blondeau has the roof, six floors up, with nothing between it and the skyline, and it made our list of the city's rooftops. There is no pool. For a swim, the street has Arlo.

The Hoxton, at 97, stands where the Rosenwach works made wooden water towers for New York's roofs, until the factory burned down in 2009. The hotel that went up in its place in 2018 is built of brick salvaged from the fire, and the carriage house that survived it is now the kitchen. Both restaurants are Michael Solomonov's: K'Far, an Israeli kitchen open all day, has the lobby, and Laser Wolf, his Israeli grill, has the roof, facing the same skyline as everyone else on the street.

Arlo Williamsburg, at 96, was still called The Williamsburg Hotel in our day. It opened under that name in 2017 and took this one after a sale in 2023. Being just down the street from home, it was also where we went for a drink, and on a day pass for the pool.

The pool is on the roof, 40 feet of it, looking across the East River at Manhattan, and the Water Tower bar is up there beside it, though the real water towers were made at number 97. On a quiet weekday it was one of the best things about living nearby: a drink, a book and the whole of Manhattan across the water, and it was hard not to feel lucky to live in New York. At the weekend the same roof was a poser's paradise. Downstairs, the café bar had live music most weeknights, from musicians better than a hotel bar had any right to book. The ground floor now belongs to Sungold.

North 12th Street

The William Vale is the other one we stayed in: Albo Liberis's white tower, open since 2016 and raised on angled struts, with a balcony on every room. Ours, in March, was a suite whose balcony went all the way round, with Brooklyn spread out below and the view running down to the Williamsburg Bridge. Friends came over, and there was a small party in the room before we went out, later that night, to one of Brooklyn's hotspots. A wraparound balcony makes a better first stop than most bars.

It is a very bougie hotel, and cool enough, and well enough decorated, to carry the word off. Leuca, Andrew Carmellini's Southern Italian restaurant downstairs, was wonderful, and Westlight, the bar on top of the 22nd floor, went on our list of rooftops. The 60-foot Vale Pool is said to be the longest outdoor hotel pool in New York, a record in the one direction the city has never much cared about. In March we left it alone.

The waterfront

All four hotels are within ten minutes' walk of the L at Bedford Avenue, the neighbourhood's main street, and the train is the quick way into Manhattan. The slow way, and the one with the view, is the East River Ferry, which calls at North and South Williamsburg on its run between Wall Street and East 34th Street.

Get off at South Williamsburg for Domino Park, on the site of the old Domino Sugar Refinery, which opened that stretch of the waterfront to the public for the first time in more than 160 years. Its raised walkway stands on 21 columns kept from the refinery's Raw Sugar Warehouse: the sugar has gone, and the columns have found other work. East River State Park, the other waterfront park, faces the same skyline, and on Saturdays Smorgasburg's food market sets up on it.

Dinner

Sunday in Brooklyn, at 348 Wythe Avenue, is for brunch, which it serves every day of the week, the name notwithstanding. Book Lilia, on Union Avenue at North 10th Street, for Missy Robbins's pasta, which we thought incredible. For pizza, go out to Roberta's, at 261 Moore Street in Bushwick: the best in Brooklyn, by our reckoning. Park Slope and Carroll Gardens are further afield, one hipper than the next.

Book Peter Luger well ahead. It is a classic American steakhouse and a hard table to get, even when we were locals, and it takes no credit cards, so bring cash or a US debit card. It has stood at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge since 1887, at the far end of the view from our balcony at The William Vale.