The Greenwich Hotel

Co-founded by Robert De Niro, The Greenwich Hotel sits on a cobbled Tribeca corner and behaves less like a hotel than like the townhouse of a well-traveled friend. Each of its rooms is individually decorated — handmade tiles, aged leather, lantern light — and the courtyard and lantern-lit drawing room give guests somewhere to actually live, not just sleep.

Its reputation rests on discretion: film-industry guests pass through without fuss, and the Japanese-influenced Shibui Spa, built around a centuries-old wooden farmhouse frame, is among the most quietly beautiful rooms in downtown Manhattan. It is Tribeca's texture — brick, timber, low light — rendered as a place to stay.