New YorkRooftop Pool Hotels

Compact but capable — forty feet of water on a rooftop rarely crowded at the right hours, with the East River and the skyline beyond it. Day passes and cabanas are both available. Good for a mid-week afternoon; the operator programs weekend DJ sets and Sunday day parties, so that is when the deck turns.

Manhattan's most reliably fun rooftop pool — the Jimmy, atop what's now ModernHaus SoHo — where the scene is the point and it delivers on sunny weekends. Eighteen stories up, the panorama runs from the Hudson round to Midtown and the East River bridges. Memorial Day to Labor Day, 21 and over after five. The bar is public; the pool is not.

The rooftop pool that helped invent the Meatpacking scene — 45 feet of water held at 84°F all year, so it stays swimmable while the district hums below. The Hudson sits to the west, the skyline to the east, and the crowd is exactly as seen-and-be-seen as the neighborhood promises. Guests and members only, which keeps it from tipping over.

A genuine lap pool running the length of a narrow 6th-floor deck in Midtown, cabanas down one side, open 8am to 8pm to guests and a few day passes. The view is one direction only — down the street corridor, buildings tight on both long sides — so come for the water, not the outlook. Heated in all seasons, rare enough here to be the point.

The best actual swimming pool in this list — seventy heated feet on a fourth-floor terrace, marked four feet the whole way, with wide entry steps and a lifeguard on the chair. Day passes for non-guests. The hotel around it is unremarkable and the skyline is far off, but nobody gives you this much water.