What Is the Best Bar to See the Empire State Building in New York?

What Is the Best Bar to See the Empire State Building in New York?

The Empire State Building is the one New York landmark that looks better from a distance than it does from its own front steps. Midtown's towers crowd it at street level, but from five, ten or twenty blocks away, and especially from a rooftop to the north or east, it reads the way the postcards promise: a lit spire rising over everything around it. A handful of New York bars were practically built around that fact, with terraces angled so the building sits center frame behind your glass.

The strongest single answer is the big rooftop bar on Fifth Avenue in the NoMad stretch south of the building, the one whose name is simply its street number on that avenue. Its terrace faces the Empire State Building almost head-on from a few blocks away, close enough that the tower fills the northern sky without any other structure crowding the base. On a clear evening the lit crown is the whole room's focal point, and the bar has built its reputation on precisely that alignment. It is loud, it is tourist-heavy, and nobody goes for the cocktail list. They go because the framing is the best in the city.

That said, "best" depends on what you want with the view: a quiet seat, a date-night room, a Brooklyn waterfront angle, or a drink after actually going up the building. This page runs through the honest options, the trade-offs of each, and when a deck ticket beats a barstool. For the wider sightseeing picture around it, see things to do in NYC, and for the building itself, our Empire State Building ticket guide covers entry in detail. This page is part of the coverage at New York City Travel Guide.

Which New York Bar Has the Best View of the Empire State Building?

The big rooftop bar on Fifth Avenue just south of the building, the NoMad terrace whose name is its street number, is the best single bar for seeing the Empire State Building, because its terrace faces the tower almost directly from a few blocks away. No other drinking spot in the city frames the building so completely, with the lit spire filling the sky above the tables.

The trade-off is crowds and tourist pricing, so go for the view, not the mixology.

The reason that rooftop wins on framing is geography. It sits close enough to the Empire State Building that the tower dominates the view without the intervening blocks of Midtown clutter that ruin the angle from farther uptown. Rooftop bars further north, in the West 40s or around Times Square, tend to catch the building off to one side or partially blocked by neighboring towers. Bars to the west along the Hudson get a wide skyline but the Empire State Building is one element among many. The near-direct sightline from the NoMad blocks is what makes the difference.

The experience itself is what you would expect from a bar whose entire business is a view. The terrace is large, the crowd skews visitors and celebrations, and on weekend evenings you may wait for a rail spot. Weeknights and earlier evenings are calmer, and in winter the rooftop runs heated enclosures so the view does not shut down with the weather. Come for a first drink of the night rather than a last one: the light on the building is the point, and it is at its best from dusk until the crown's evening colors come on.

If you want the same building from a completely different direction, the next-best options sit across the river. Harriet's, the rooftop at the 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge in DUMBO, looks back at Lower Manhattan and Midtown from the Brooklyn waterfront, and the Empire State Building rises above the downtown cluster in the middle distance. The view is wider and the room is quieter, but the building is smaller in the frame. It is the better pick for a date, the worse pick for the postcard.

What Are the Other Rooftop Bars with the Empire State Building in View?

Beyond the NoMad Fifth Avenue rooftop, the strongest Empire State Building views from bars belong to Harriet's at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge across the water, The Press Lounge on the Far West Side, and the rooftop lounges of Midtown hotels between the 30s and 40s, where the tower sits inside a wider skyline frame. Each trades the head-on angle for something else: calm, water, or a full Midtown panorama. None matches the near-tower terrace for pure framing.

The Press Lounge, atop a hotel on the Far West Side of Midtown, gives you a long west-facing terrace where the Empire State Building anchors the eastern edge of the view. It is a more polished room than the NoMad view bar, with a hotel crowd rather than a tour-bus crowd, and the building shares the frame with the Hudson River and the New Jersey skyline. If your group splits between "view of the building" and "generally nice rooftop," this is the compromise that annoys nobody.

Midtown's hotel rooftops cluster around Times Square and the blocks south of it, and several catch the tower at an angle. These rooms, the Moxy's rooftop among them, trade distance for atmosphere: the building is present in the frame but you are buying a night out that happens to include it, rather than a viewing platform that serves drinks. That distinction matters. If the Empire State Building is the reason you are choosing the bar, angle and proximity beat a good cocktail list every time.

There is also a category worth naming honestly because it disappoints people: bars that advertise "skyline views" without specifying which skyline. Downtown rooftops in the Financial District look at the harbor, the bridges and Lower Manhattan, and the Empire State Building is a distant spike behind newer towers. It is visible, on a clear night, but if the building is the purpose of the evening, Lower Manhattan is the wrong side of the city to drink on. Check which direction a rooftop faces before you book anything.

Where Should You Drink Near the Empire State Building Itself?

The blocks immediately around the Empire State Building, in NoMad and Koreatown, are where you drink before or after going up, and the best-known spots are the hotel bars and the Koreatown rooftops on 32nd Street, which sit close enough to see the tower's upper floors from their terraces. The view up close is dramatic in a different way, more texture than postcard, and it pairs naturally with a deck visit.

Koreatown's rooftop bars on West 32nd Street are the sleeper pick here. They sit a few blocks from the building's base, which means the view is steep: you look up the tower's flank rather than at its silhouette. On a warm night, with the building lit above the street noise, these terraces deliver something the far-away rooftops cannot, a sense of standing underneath the thing. The rooms are smaller and the crowds thinner than at the famous view bars, which for some travelers is the whole appeal.

NoMad's hotel bars, a few blocks south, occupy the middle ground. Several have street-level or low-terrace seating with the tower visible overhead, and the neighborhood's restaurant scene makes it easy to build an evening: dinner, a drink with the building in view, then the walk up Fifth Avenue to the entrance. This is the practical geometry for anyone with deck tickets, since the building's own entrance is on 34th Street and the surrounding blocks are dense with places to eat and drink on the way.

For pairing a visit with the wider neighborhood, our Midtown Manhattan guide lays out what else sits within walking distance, and rooftop bars in NYC covers the citywide scene if the Empire State Building is one stop on a bigger bar crawl.

Bar View or Observation Deck: Which Is the Better Way to See the Empire State Building?

A bar gives you the Empire State Building in frame, from outside; the observation deck gives you the whole city from inside it, and the two experiences do not substitute for each other. If the building is the subject, drink somewhere with it in view. If the skyline is the subject, go up. Many visitors do both in one evening, since the deck is open late and the bars are open later.

The useful comparison is what each one actually shows you. From a rooftop bar, you see the building: its shape, its lighting, its place in the skyline. From the 86th floor, the building disappears from your own view and becomes the thing you stand on, and what you see instead is everything else, Central Park to the north, the harbor to the south, the bridges in between. People who skip the deck because they "saw the building from a bar" have missed a different experience, not a duplicate one.

The deck's own pricing is worth knowing before you plan the evening. Box office admission for the Empire State Building's full AM/PM Experience, which includes the 86th floor and the second-floor museum, lists at $75.12 with tax, per the prices CityPASS publishes for its savings math, and the building's own online pricing starts lower for basic timed entry with a booking charge on top. Timed entry means you pick a slot in advance, so a deck visit pairs well with a bar afterward rather than before: go up at sunset, come down, drink with the building in view from outside.

If the deck is the plan, the Empire State Building Observation Deck & Museum ticket bundles the 86th floor with the museum experience below, and the comparison of all five decks is laid out in NYC observation decks.

How Do You Pick Between the View Bars Without Wasting an Evening?

Pick the bar by sightline first, crowd second and drinks last: if the Empire State Building is the reason for the trip, only the near-tower rooftops and the Brooklyn waterfront angles deliver it well, and everything else is a nice rooftop that happens to include it. Check the direction a terrace faces, book ahead for weekend nights, and arrive at dusk, because the building's evening lighting is the payoff and it comes on early.

A simple filter saves most people a wasted night. Ask three questions of any candidate bar. Which way does the terrace face, and is the Empire State Building actually in the frame or just "visible"? Is the crowd one you want to spend ninety minutes inside? And does the room take reservations, because the best view bars fill their rail spots first on Friday and Saturday nights. The answers cut the long list of New York rooftops down to a short one fast.

Season matters more than people expect. Rooftop season in New York runs roughly April through October, and several terraces close or shrink to heated indoor sections in winter, which concentrates everyone into fewer rooms. Summer weekends are the hardest combination: every view bar is at capacity by sunset. The shoulder months, late spring and early fall, give you the same light with more space at the rail, and weeknights year-round are the reliable play. If your trip includes a Saturday, spend it on something else and drink with the view on a Tuesday.

One planning note that belongs here rather than buried in a transit guide: getting between these bars is a subway problem, and the fare system changed recently. The MetroCard is retired, and as of 1 January 2026 the MTA no longer sells or refills them; the weekly value now comes from an automatic $35 OMNY fare cap that applies when you tap the same card or device for every ride, with nothing to buy in advance. Tap the same card every time or the cap silently resets. The details are in our OMNY guide.

What About Seeing the Building from a Cruise or a Neighborhood Walk Instead?

A harbor cruise gives you the Empire State Building inside the full skyline panorama from the water, and a downtown neighborhood walk puts you in bars and restaurants with the building visible up the avenues, so both work as complements to the rooftop answer rather than rivals to it. The cruise is the better pick for photography, the walk for an actual evening, and neither frames the tower like the near-side rooftops do.

The sunset harbor cruise is the underrated option. From the water, the Empire State Building sits at the center of the Midtown cluster, and the evening light hits it before the taller downtown towers take over the frame. It is a seated, structured two hours rather than a bar crawl, with a drink from the onboard bar and the skyline switching to its evening colors mid-loop. For a photographer, the water angle is the one the rooftops cannot give you.

For the walk-and-eat version, the food tours through downtown neighborhoods end within easy reach of bars where the building is visible up the avenue grid, and the Village's evening scene in particular is full of low-key rooms with a sliver of Midtown between the roofs. It is a different pleasure from the dedicated view bar: less spectacle, better drinks, and the building appears and disappears as the streets allow. Some travelers find that more New York than a rooftop full of cameras.

Common Questions About Bars and the Empire State Building

The questions below are the ones travelers actually ask once they have the shortlist: whether the famous rooftop needs a reservation, what a drink runs, whether children can come along, and how the bar view compares to the deck. The short answers are: book ahead on weekends, expect premium pricing, check each venue's policy, and treat the deck and the bar as two halves of one evening rather than either-or choices.

What is the best bar to see the empire state building?

The big rooftop bar on Fifth Avenue a few blocks south of the building, the NoMad terrace whose name is its street number, is the best single bar for seeing the Empire State Building, because its terrace faces the tower almost head-on with nothing crowding the base. For a calmer room with the building in a wider frame, The Press Lounge on the West Side or Harriet's across the river in Brooklyn are the strong alternatives.

Do I need a reservation for rooftop bars with Empire State Building views?

On Friday and Saturday nights, yes, for any of the well-known view rooftops, and even weeknights are safer booked in summer season. Walk-ins are usually possible early in the evening, but the rail spots with the direct sightline go first. Check the venue's own site for its current reservation policy, since rooftop policies change seasonally.

Can you see the Empire State Building from a bar in Brooklyn?

Yes. The waterfront rooftops in DUMBO and Brooklyn Heights look back at Lower Manhattan with the Midtown towers behind it, and the Empire State Building rises above the downtown cluster in the middle distance. The building is smaller in the frame than from a Midtown rooftop, but the panorama is wider and the rooms are generally quieter.

Is it better to go up the Empire State Building or see it from a bar?

They are different experiences. The deck shows you the city from inside the building, with the skyline in every direction; the bar shows you the building itself, lit, from outside. If you have one evening, go up at sunset for the timed slot and drink afterward at a rooftop with the tower in view, which is the sequence many visitors end up wishing they had planned.

Are the rooftop bars open in winter in New York?

Most of the major view rooftops stay open year-round, with heated enclosures or indoor sections replacing the open terrace in cold months, but the experience changes and some smaller terraces close entirely. Check the venue directly for winter hours. If the view is the whole point, the heated rooftop spots near the tower still deliver it in December and January.

Can kids come to the rooftop bars to see the building?

Policies vary by venue and by time of day, with some rooftops allowing families early in the evening and switching to adults-only later. Verify the specific bar's policy before you plan around it. For a guaranteed family option, the observation deck itself is the straightforward choice, and the 86th floor is open to all ages during operating hours.

The honest closing note is this: the bar answer and the deck answer are the same evening, not competing plans. New York gives you the rare option of standing on the landmark at sunset and drinking underneath it an hour later, and the people who do both are the ones who leave with the pictures and the story.